No one can guess what it means to me to find that I have hold of the whole of this thing! It is like strong wine to me--I scarcely know where I am. * * * * * June 4th. I am sitting down by the window, and first I kick my heels against my old trunk, and then I write this. Hi! Hi! I think of a poem that I used to recite about Santa Claus--“Ho, Castor! ho, Pollux!”--and then ho a lot of other things--a Donner and a Blitzen I remember in particular. I want a reindeer--a Pegasus--a Valkyrie--an anything--to carry me away up into the air where I can exult without impropriety! Come blow your horn, hunter, Come blow your horn on high! In yonder room there lieth a 'cello player, And now he's going to move away! Come blow your horn-- That's an old Elizabethan song. I heard them come up for his trunk just now, and they've dragged it down-stairs, and I hear the landlady fuming because they are tearing the wall paper. I have never loved the sound of the landlady's voice before. * * * * * --The world is divinely arranged, there is no question about it. * * * * * June 5th. Deep in my soul I was convinced that the room would be let to something worse. But now it appears that the landlady's sister is to occupy it. --So now I will get to work! --Moving is noisy; I can't complain. I have been walking about the streets. I am hungry for the work; but still, I had much to think of. It is a wonderful thing--a glorious thing, this story--it will make men's hearts leap. * * * * * June 6th. I have plenty of time to write journals, if I feel like it. There is the sister, and there is the landlady, and there is another woman, and they have been jabbering about dresses all of the morning. I have been like a crazy man--I was all on fire this morning, too! O God, it is too cruel! I could dress those three hags with broomsticks. * * * * * --How long is this to continue, I want to know. Here it is afternoon and they are still chattering. Every time I have tried to compose my thoughts they have come back and begun chattering again. And so I can only pace about, and then rush out into the street--and wear myself sick. I call this simply monstrous. That my soul should be tied down to such vulgarity as this--is it not maddening? Here I am--with all my load of woe--at this fearful crisis! And I am to be shattered and wrecked and ruined by _this_! Just as long as they choose to sit there, just so long I am helpless. Was it for this that I have borne all the pain? * * * * * It seems to me that I hear jeering laughter around me from a swarm of little demons. I hide my face and flee, but they follow me. * * * * *