February 24th.
Oh, one can get used to even a flashy restaurant! It is your fate—you take it. This is how I pass all my time there. I struggle to resist the deadening of it, and the horror of it; while I am going about the loathsome grind I try to think—try to have some idea in my head. And something comes to me—something beautiful, perhaps; and then in a few moments, in the clatter and confusion, I lose it; and after that I go about haunted, restless, feeling that I have lost something, that I ought to be doing something. What the thing is, I do not even know—but so it drives me and drives me!
I spend literally hours that way.
February 25th.
When are you going to read that poem—when? The week was gone yesterday—but I will not trouble you, even now! I wait, I wait!
February 27th.
There is another torment about this fearful place that I am in, one that you could not imagine. I had thought that it would be a pleasure, but it tears my soul. They have music in the evening; and fancy a person in my state listening to a violin!