I have never kept a journal--I have been too busy living; but to-day I begin a journal. I am so built that I can do but one thing at a time. Now that I have begun The Captive, I must be haunted with it all day; when I am not writing it I must be dreaming it, or restless because I am not. Therefore it occurred to me that in the hours of weariness I would write about it what was in my mind--what fears and what hopes; why and how I write it will be a story in itself, and some day I think it will be read. * * * * * I have come to the last stage of the fight, and I see the goal. I will tell the story, and by and by wise editors can print it in the Appendix! Yesterday I was a cable-car conductor, and to-day I am a poet! I know of some immortal poems that were written by a druggist's clerk, and some by a gager of liquid barrels, but none by a cable-car conductor. “It sounds interesting, tell us about it!” says the reader. I shall, but not to-day. To-day I begin the book! * * * * * I did not write that on April 6th, I wrote it a month ago--one day when I was thinking about this. I put it there now, because it will do to begin; but I had no jests in my heart on April 6th. * * * * * April 10th. I have been for four days in a kind of frenzy. I have come down like a collapsed balloon, and I think I have had enough for once. I have written the opening scene, but not finally; and then I got into the middle--I could not help it. How in God's name I am ever to do this fearful thing, I don't know; it frightens me, and sometimes I lose all heart. * * * * * I suppose I shall have to begin again tonight. I must eat something first, though. That is one of my handicaps: I wear myself out and have to stop and eat. Will anybody ever love me for this work, will anybody ever understand it? I suppose I can get back where I was yesterday, but always it grows harder, and more stern. I set my teeth together. * * * * * It was like the bursting of an overstrained dam, these last four days. How long I have been pent up--eighteen months! And eighteen months seems like a lifetime to me. I have been a bloodhound in the leash, hungering--hungering for this thing, and the longing has piled up in me day by day. Sometimes it has been more than I could bear; and when the time was near, I was so wild that I was sick. The book! The book! Freedom and the book!