I never allowed any weakness in my soul before; I never made any terms with it. I blamed everything upon myself. And now that my whole life is weakness and misery, I writhe and struggle--I turn back always on myself, suspecting myself, blaming myself. I can not lay it to the world, I can not get into the habit--it is such a miserable habit! How many millions there are of them--poor, querulous wretches, blaming their fate, crying out against the world's injustice and neglect--crying out against the need of working, wishing for this and that--discontented, impotent, miserable! Oh my God--and I am one of such! I can not bear the sound of my own voice when I complain! I hear the world answering me--and I take the part of the world! “Why don't you be a man and go out and earn your way? Why don't you face your fate? You prate about your message--what business has a man with a message that is too much for him? What business have you with weakness--what _excuse_ have you for weakness?” And so I came to see it. The world is right and I am all wrong! And the truth of it burns me like an acid in my brain. * * * * * January 24th. And all the time my whole being is still restless with the storms that raged in it last spring! I have all those memories, all that poignancy. I can not realize it--any of what I was and had--but I know it as a _fact_, a memory, and I crouch and tremble, I grow sick with it. * * * * * Why don't they write to me? My money is going! * * * * * January 26th. The reason that I shudder so at the prospect of having to face the world again, is that I have no hope. _I have no hope!_ Once I could go out into that hellish market. I could be any man's slave, do any drudgery--because I saw a light ahead--I saw deliverance--I had a purpose! And now what purpose have I--what hope have I? I tell you I am a man in a trap! I can do nothing! I can do no more than if I were walled in with iron! I say that my business in this world is to be a poet! I say that there is only one thing I can do--only one way that I can get free--and that is by doing my work, by writing books. And I have done all that I can do, I have earned my freedom--and no one will give it to me! Oh, I shall die if I am penned here much longer! * * * * * I eat out my heart, I burn up my very entrails in my frenzies. Set me free! _Set me free!_ * * * * * I thought to-day if I only had a little money--if I could only publish that book myself! I can not believe that men would not love it--I can not--no, you may crush me all you please, but I can not! And I would take it and shout it from the housetops--I would peddle it on the streets--I would _make_ the world hear me! --And then I sink back, and I hear the world say, “You poor fool!” * * * * * January 28th.