Presently I saw that I was writing a poem but that it was rough and needed modifying and polishing. I was in a great fever to change it and did so but more eager to go on with my idea, which was about this tangle of life. I became so moved and interested that I almost forgot Alice in the process. When I read it over it seemed but a poor reflection of the thoughts I had felt, the great sad mood I was in. Then I sat there, dissatisfied and unhappy, resolving to write Alice and tell her all.
I took a pen and wrote her that I could not marry her now, that I was in no position to do so. Later, if I found myself in better shape financially, I would come back. I told her that I did not want to send back her letters, that I did not wish to think our love was at an end. I had not meant to run away. I closed by saying that I still loved her and that the picture she had painted of herself standing at the window in the moonlight had torn my heart. But I could not write it as effectually as I might have, for I was haunted by the idea that I should never keep my word. Something kept telling me that it was not wise, that I didn’t really want to.
While I was writing Hazard came into the room and glanced over my shoulder to where the poem was lying. “What you doing, Dreiser? Writing poetry?”
“Trying to,” I replied a little shamefacedly. “I don’t seem to be able to make much of it, though.” The while I was wondering at the novelty of being taken for a poet. It seemed such a fine thing to be.
“There’s no money in it,” he observed helpfully. “You can’t sell ’em. I’ve written tons of ’em, but it don’t do any good. You’d better be putting your time on a book or a play.”
A book or a play! I sat up. To be considered a writer, a dramatist—even a possible dramatist—raised me in my own estimation. Why, at this rate I might become one—who knows?
“I know it isn’t profitable,” I said. “Still, it might be if I wrote them well enough. It would be a great thing to be a great poet.”
Hazard smiled sardonically. From his pinnacle of twenty-six years such aspirations seemed ridiculous. I might be a good newspaper man (I think he was willing to admit that), but a poet!
The discussion took the turn of book- and play-writing. He had written a book in connection with Young, I think his name was. He had lately been thinking of writing a play. He expatiated on the money there was to be made out of this, the great name some playwrights achieved. Look at Augustus Thomas now, who had once worked on the Star here. One of his pieces was then running in St. Louis. Look at Henry Blossom, once a St. Louis society boy, one of whose books was now in the local bookstore windows, a hit. To my excited mind the city was teeming with brilliant examples. Eugene Field had once worked here, on this very paper; Mark Twain had idled about here for a time, drunk and hopeless; W. C. Brann had worked on and gone from this paper; William Marion Reedy the same.
I returned to my desk after a time, greatly stirred by this conversation. My gloom was dissipated. Hazard had promised to let me read this book. This world was a splendid place for talent, I thought. It bestowed success and honor upon those who could succeed. Plays or books, or both, were the direct entrance to every joy which the heart could desire. Something of the rumored wonder and charm of the lives of successful playwrights came to me, their studios, their summer homes and the like. Here at last, then, was the equivalent of Dick’s wealthy girl!