I must make good at this job, and save ... my grandmother, who had sent me money the previous year, I must not call on her again. And I did not count on my father ... for he was strenuously in the saddle to a grass widow, the one who had lured him to change boarding houses, and she was devouring his meagre substance like the Scriptural locust.
That first breakfast was a nightmare. I "practised breakfast" from three o'clock till six ... by six I had started another breakfast, and by seven, after having spoiled and burned much food, I was tolerably ready for customers ... who seemed, at that hour, to storm the place.
It is not necessary to go into detail. In three days I was through. And I had my first fight with Barton.
I was back in my army tent once more, free, with my Shelley, my Keats, my manuscript....
In despair of ever returning to Hebron, once more I lay under starry nights, dreaming poetry and comparing myself to all the Great Dead....
With the top of the tent pulled back to let the stars in, I lay beneath the gigantic, marching constellations overhead—under my mosquito netting—and wrote poems under stress of great inspiration ... at times it seemed that Shelley was with me in my tent—a slight, grey form ... and little, valiant, stocky Keats, too.