So it is to be this, so this is to be my life! I am to send this book to publisher after publisher, and have it come back like this! And meanwhile to spend my time alternating between this room--and the wholesale-paper business! * * * * * Yes, I am getting to see the truth! I am a helpless atom, struggling to survive--a glimmering light in the darkness--and I am going out! I am losing--and what shall I do! Who will save me--who will help me? * * * * * I was talking to a friend yesterday; he predicted just what happened. “Make one rule,” he said, “expect nothing of the world. When you send out a manuscript, _know_ that it is coming back!--Otherwise you go mad.” But I should go mad _that_ way. Why, what am I to do? How am I to work unless I can get free? I can not live a single day unless I have that hope. And if these blind creatures that make money out of books keep on sending my poem back--why, it will kill me--it will turn me into a fool! * * * * * October 9th. I did not go to bed last night until nearly daylight. I was desperate--I was crazy with perplexity. This thing had never occurred to me as the wildest possibility. I would pace the floor for hours; and then again sink into a stupor. “They send it back! They don't want it!”--I kept on muttering.--And, poor fool that I am, I had pictured to myself how they would read it. I saw the publisher himself glancing at a line of it by chance, and then rushing on. I saw him declaiming it with excited eyes--as I used to declaim it! Poor fool! * * * * * --Well, I made another desperate attempt. I wrote last night to another poet that I respect--(the list is not very long). I wrote in the heat of my despair--I told him the whole story. I said that I was crying for the judgment of some one who had love and enthusiasm; some one who had another idea than making money out of it. I told him that I knew he had many such requests, but that he never had one from a man who had worked as I had. I pleaded that he need only read a few lines--I begged him to let me hear from him at once. --And now I shall wait. I can't do anything else but wait! * * * * * October 10th. I tried to read a novel to-day, but I could not fix my attention--I could not do anything. * * * * * October 11th. “I answer your letter at once as you ask me to. In the first place let me assure you of my sympathy. You are at a stage at which all poets--or nearly all--have to pass. Do not let yourself be disheartened--keep at it--and if you work as you write you will come out the victor in the end.