In the spirit of these ideals I returned to my small attic room in Jamaica Plain and set to work to put my new conceptions into some sort of literary form.
CHAPTER XXIX
I Join the Anti-Poverty Brigade
In the slow procession of my struggling fortunes this visit to the West seems important, for it was the beginning of my career as a fictionist. My talk with Kirkland and my perception of the sordid monotony of farm life had given me a new and very definite emotional relationship to my native state. I perceived now the tragic value of scenes which had hitherto appeared merely dull or petty. My eyes were opened to the enforced misery of the pioneer. As a reformer my blood was stirred to protest. As a writer I was beset with a desire to record in some form this newly-born conception of the border.
No sooner did I reach my little desk in Jamaica Plain than I began to write, composing in the glow of a flaming conviction. With a delightful (and deceptive) sense of power, I graved with heavy hand, as if with pen of steel on brazen tablets, picture after picture of the plain. I had no doubts, no hesitations about the kind of effect I wished to produce. I perceived little that was poetic, little that was idyllic, and nothing that was humorous in the man, who, with hands like claws, was scratching a scanty living from the soil of a rented farm, while his wife walked her ceaseless round from tub to churn and from churn to tub. On the contrary, the life of such a family appealed to me as an almost unrelievedly tragic futility.
In the few weeks between my return and the beginning of my teaching, I wrote several short stories, and outlined a propagandist play. With very little thought as to whether such stories would sell rapidly or not at all I began to send them away, to the Century, to Harper's, and other first class magazines without permitting myself any deep disappointment when they came back—as they all did!
However, having resolved upon being printed by the best periodicals I persisted. Notwithstanding rejection after rejection I maintained an elevated aim and continued to fire away.