A man was talking to me to-day about what I am doing. “I should think you would try to get some work more congenial,” he said, “some literary work.” Yes!—I sell wholesale-paper, and that is bad enough; but at least I do not sell my character.
I to enter into the literary business world! I to forsake my ideals and my standards—to learn to please the public and the men who make money out of the public! Ah, no—let me go on selling paper, and “keep my love as a thing apart—no heathen shall look therein!”
What could I do, besides? And who would give me a chance? I could not review books—I know nothing about modern books, and still less about modern book standards. Neither do I know anything to write that any magazines would want.
—And besides, in four days more, shall I not have fifty or sixty dollars? And what shall I want then?
Ah, how I count the days! And when I am out of this place, how I will run away from it! The very books I read while I was there will always be painful to me.
—They will be glad to get rid of me, too. Poor me—I have given up trying to be understood. All these things pass. My business is with God.