Here I sit, and I have but seven dollars left to my name, including what I made by the shoveling. And I sit and watch the day creep on me like a wild beast on its prey--the day when I must go back into the world and toil again! Oh, it will kill me--it will kill me! * * * * * I sit and wait and hang upon the faint chance of one publisher more. It is my only chance,--and such a chance! I find myself calculating, wondering; yes, famous books have been rejected often, and still found their mark. Can I still believe that this book will shake men? Ah, God, in my soul I do not believe it, because I have lost my inspiration! I have let go of that fire that was to drive like a wind-storm over the world. * * * * * Yes, I ask myself if such things can be! I ask myself if they were real, all those fervors and all that boldness of mine! If it was natural, that way that lived! --Oh, and then I look back, and my heart grows sick within me. * * * * * So I spend my time, and when I turn and try to lose myself in Nietzsche, his mercilessness flings me into new despair. * * * * * January 18th. I have the terrible gift of insensibility; and I think my insensibility torments me more than anything else in the world. I have no life, no power, no feeling, naturally--it is all my will, it is all effort. And now that I am not striving, I sink back into a state of numbness, of dull, insensible despair. I no longer feel anything, I no longer care about anything. I pass my time in helpless impotence--and day by day I watch a thing creeping upon me as in a nightmare. I must go out into the world again and slave for my bread! --Oh, _then_ I will feel something, I think! * * * * * Another week and more is gone, and I have but a little over four dollars. * * * * * January 20th. I have stopped reading Nietzsche. I could not stand any more of it. It does not satisfy me. It is not merely that I am so weak now, and that his mocking goads me. I would have been through with him in any case. He is so narrow--so one-sided. It is reaction from the present, of course, that accounts for it. Too much gazing upon the world, that has led him to believe that love of man necessarily implies compromise. There are two words that are absent from his writings--they are love and humanity; and so it never satisfies you, you are always discontented, you have always to correct and supply. * * * * * January 22d. Oh why do those publishers take so long! I wait and yearn; I grow sick with waiting and yearning.