I can not afford to waste my time worrying about such things. I only say “Fools!”
—I took it to another publisher. I don't know any in particular, but I will try the best. This publisher didn't seem very anxious to read it. Go ahead, try it!—Or are you a fool too?
—Of course I shall have to begin tramping around, looking for some work again. I must find something better than the last.
July 20th.
Nervous, impatient—it is so that I have lived. Never to waste an instant has been my passion. I have struggled, watched, fought for a minute. If ever I were held back or kept idle it drove me wild, and I burst through everything. It has always been a torture to me not to be thinking something.
But less of that torture than I have now, I think I never had; it seems as if I had won the mastery—I mind nothing any more. I walk upon the air, and I never tire. Thoughts—endless thoughts—come to me without ever the asking; nothing disturbs me, nothing hinders me—I take everything along with me.—I am full of impulse, of life, of energy!—
I am the owner of the sphere,
Of the seven stars and the solar year,
Of Cæsar's hand and Plato's brain!—
And this when I have spent all the day looking for work!—answering advertisements, and tramping to this place and that! Discouraging?—what does the word mean?