"I had gone supperless to bed, and spent the long night asking, 'What shall I do?' and, receiving no reply but that which is so hard for eager youth to accept, 'Wait and trust.'
"I was alone in the world, with no fortune but my own talent, and even that I was beginning to doubt, because it brought no money. For a year I had worked and hoped, with a brave spirit; had written my life into poems and tales; tried a play; turned critic and reviewed books; offered my pen and time to any one who would employ them, and now was ready for the hardest literary work, and the poorest pay, for starvation stared me in the face.
"All my ventures failed, and my paper boats freighted with so many high hopes, went down one after another, leaving me to despair. The last wreck lay on my table then,—a novel, worn with much journeying to and fro, on which I had staked my last chance, and lost it.
"As I stood there at my window, cold and hungry, solitary and despairing, I said to myself, in a desperate mood,—
"'It is all a mistake; I have no talent, and there is no room in the world for me, so the quicker I get out of it the better.'
"Just then a little chap came from a gate opposite, with a shovel on his shoulder, and trudged away, whistling shrilly, to look for a job. I watched him out of sight, thinking bitterly,—
"'Now look at the injustice of it! Here am I, a young man full of brains, starving because no one will give me a chance; and there is that ignorant little fellow making a living with an old shovel!'"
A voice seemed to answer me, saying,—
"'Why don't you do the same? If brains don't pay, try muscles, and thank God that you have health.'
"Of course it was only my own pluck and common sense; but I declare to you I was as much struck by the new idea as if a strange voice had actually spoken; and I answered, heartily,—