January 31st.
More snow again to-day. And I have made over five dollars. But I have come out of it more dead than alive—dulled, dispirited, utterly worn out.
If I could only be an animal for a time. But each day of the drudgery only makes me wilder with nervousness.
February 1st.
They regret, of course, and hold the MS. at my disposal. I went up to get it this afternoon, and half by accident I met the man I had seen before. I had a talk with him. He was a very curious personage.
He seemed to have been interested in The Captive. “I'll tell you,” he said, “you know there's really some extraordinary work in that poem. I believe that you have it in you to make some literature before you get through, Mr. Stirling.”
“Do you?” I said.
“Yes,” he replied, “I feel pretty sure of it. You ask me to tell you about it—so you mustn't mind if I speak frankly. And of course it's very crude. You haven't found your voice yet, you're seeking for mastery, and your work is obviously young. Anybody can see in a few lines that it's young—it's one of those things like Goetz von Berlichingen, or Die Räuber—you tear a passion to tatters, you want to rip the universe up the back. But of course that wears off by and by; it isn't well to take life too seriously, you know, and I don't think it'll be long before you come to feel that The Captive isn't natural or possible—or desirable either.”