October 9th.
I did not go to bed last night until nearly daylight. I was desperate—I was crazy with perplexity. This thing had never occurred to me as the wildest possibility.
I would pace the floor for hours; and then again sink into a stupor. “They send it back! They don't want it!”—I kept on muttering.—And, poor fool that I am, I had pictured to myself how they would read it. I saw the publisher himself glancing at a line of it by chance, and then rushing on. I saw him declaiming it with excited eyes—as I used to declaim it! Poor fool!
—Well, I made another desperate attempt. I wrote last night to another poet that I respect—(the list is not very long). I wrote in the heat of my despair—I told him the whole story. I said that I was crying for the judgment of some one who had love and enthusiasm; some one who had another idea than making money out of it. I told him that I knew he had many such requests, but that he never had one from a man who had worked as I had. I pleaded that he need only read a few lines—I begged him to let me hear from him at once.
—And now I shall wait. I can't do anything else but wait!
October 10th.
I tried to read a novel to-day, but I could not fix my attention—I could not do anything.