I have scooped myself out a bathtub below the spring. I forgot towels in my list of necessaries! I fear it will be inconvenient on rainy days. I am like a child with a new toy, in my wonderful home. I was too excited to think of working. I fried an egg over a little fire, and then I roamed all about the woods. I don't remember ever having been so happy before. I had forgotten there was anything beautiful in the world.-- * * * * * --I spent the whole of the afternoon dreaming a dream. When I have finished The Captive and gotten some money, I am going to have a little house in the woods! I have just had it before my eyes--and I laughed with delight like a boy. It will be a fine big house--it will cost about fifty dollars; and there will be a table and a chair, and a cot, and such things. It will stand by a lake, a wild lake far out in the mountains! I have vowed to find a lake at least five miles from anything; and once a week I will have somebody bring me provisions. * * * * * --That is the way I shall spend next summer!--Up, up! Get to work!-- * * * * * June 17th. I have done nothing for two days but wander around and stare at things. It is all gone, every gleam of it! And I can not bring it back--I know not what to do, where to turn. I stopped in one of the hardest parts of the whole thing--in the very midst of it; and how in the world am I to begin? I walk around, I sit down, I get up again; I try to put my thoughts upon it, I bring them back again and again. But I can not do it--I have let every thread of it go. What has tramping over the country and delight in houses got to do with my work? I have nothing to write--the whole thing is a blank to me. And here I am, eating up my provisions!--This shows me what I am--what a child. --But how am I to get up on those fearful heights again? How am I to take the first step toward those fearful heights again? I cry that all day! * * * * * June 20th. Oh, the joy of being out in the woods! I never knew of it before--I never dreamed it! It is better than an orchestra. To be able to stretch your arms! To have a place to walk! To be able to talk aloud!--to laugh--to shout--to do what you please!--to be free from all men, and the thought of all men! And to hear your own poetry aloud!--I cried out to-day that I would go back and do the whole of The Captive over again, so that I could hear it out loud. It made me quite wild yesterday when I first realized that I was _alone_! --Last night there was a gale, and the clouds sped over the moon, and the wind roared in the trees--and I roared too! --“For I see the crescent promise of my spirit hath not set!” * * * * * June 21st.