Ah, of course it's all dead in me—and I'm prepared to believe anything they tell me! It's overwrought, it's young, it's pitched in too high a key, it's strained and unnatural, it takes life too seriously! Certainly at any rate they are right that I shall never, never do the same thing again.
But unfortunately I don't feel like writing anything else. I don't know anything about historical novels.
—I would have read some of the poem again to-night, but I'm too discouraged. I am tired of it. I know it by heart, and it doesn't take hold of me.
I have been too long among men, I groan. I see their point of view too well!
Why, there are things in that book that when I read them now make me shudder. I have hardly the courage to offer it to any one else to read. I don't know any one to take it to, besides.
O God, I'm so unhappy!
February 3d.