To-day I took myself off in a corner. I said: “Am I not here, have I not this thing to _do_? The power that I have in my soul--it is to be used for the doing of _this_; if I am to save my soul, it must be by the doing of _this_! And I am a fool that I do not face the fact. I shall be free some day--that I know--I have only to bide my time and wait. Meanwhile I am to stay here--or until I have money enough; and now I will turn my soul to iron, and do it! I am going to study what I can in this place, and at night I am going to speed home and get into a book. I will never stop again, and never give up--and above all never think, and never feel! I will get books of fact to read--I will read histories, and no more poetry. I will read Motley, and Parkman, and Prescott, and Gibbon, and Macaulay.--Macaulay will not afflict me with wild yearnings, I guess.” --Is there any author in the world more vulgar than Macaulay?--unless it be Gibbon. Or possibly Chesterfield. I have heard Chesterfield's letters referred to as a “school for gentlemen.” When the world is a little bit civilized, men will read them as they now read Machiavelli's Prince. * * * * * --All these resolutions while I was selling wholesale-paper! I fought quite a battle, and heard some of the old-time music. What a task for a poet,--to fight _not_ to live! * * * * * August 30th. I have still heard nothing from my poet! I wrote to him to-day to ask him if he had received my letter. Eighteen whole days gone by, and I watching every mail, with The Captive lying idle in a drawer! I can not stand waiting like this--Why do not people answer my letters promptly? * * * * * August 31st. I have been reading George Moore's Evelyn Innes for the last two days. He is striving toward deeper things; but the mark of the beast is in the fiber. The spiritual struggles of a young lady with two sloppy lovers at once! Of a young and beautiful girl whose first walk on the street with a baronet is a “temptation.” And who turns nun at last and worships the Holy Virgin, in order to forget her nastiness! A Gallicized novelist ought to deal with Gallic characters. While I was reading Evelyn Innes, I could never get away from the impression that I was reading the career of a chambermaid. And the whole story hinges upon the fact that a woman can not sing the sacred ecstasy of Tristan and Isolde without being a harlot! * * * * * I read the Confessions of a Young Man, and I felt the vigor of it, and the daring; but it was a very cheap kind of daring. The fundamental laws of life are occasionally enunciated by commonplace people, and that gives an opportunity to be startling. But I leave it for small boys to gape at such fireworks; my interest is in the stars.