I feel about forty years old.
And I know my feeling is not the feeling of forty years. They do not feel any of these things at forty. At forty the fire has long since burned out. When I am forty I shall look back to myself and my feelings at nineteen—and I shall smile.
Or shall I indeed smile?
[January 17.]
AS I have said, I want Fame. I want to write—to write such things as compel the admiring acclamations of the world at large; such things as are written but once in years, things subtly but distinctly different from the books written every day.
I can do this.
Let me but make a beginning, let me but strike the world in a vulnerable spot, and I can take it by storm. Let me but win my spurs, and then you will see me—of womankind and young—valiantly astride a charger riding down the world, with Fame following at the charger’s heels, and the multitudes agape.
But oh, more than all this I want to be happy!
Fame is indeed benign and gentle and satisfying. But Happiness is something at once tender and brilliant beyond all things.