I dared not face the situation. I quarrelled at home, with reason, however, fled to Arthur’s house in ——. The wild idea I had conceived in . . . . of disappearing, going away secretly and suddenly returned. No matter where I turned there seemed no refuge from my own diseased mind. Wild anarchical schemes entered my head. Now I understood why men killed, went insane. Before I had experienced passion, good and bad, honest and dishonest, clean and sane, and unclean and insane, poetic frenzy, glowing emotional enthusiasm, and now new ranges of wildness came to me.

I cursed myself, my parents, heaven and earth; then the reaction brought sorrow and spasmodic attempts at reparation.

I destroyed my books and objects of fond remembrance, the next day repented and endeavored to undo the damage. This began in Havana, continued in —— and became worse in ——.

Then in a sudden impulse I decided to go away from it all, using the excuse of going to California with my aunt, then to Chicago, which I really intended to do.

In Chicago I at first felt like making a new start, but after accepting a position, I had a foreboding I should fall down on it, and I cursed the social system and employing class for not offering me a living salary for just as much work as I could stand, and have leisure for writing, study, etc.

Death seemed preferable to working, and, dreading to go back to what it had represented in Havana and New York previous to that, I made the suicide decision. The reasons enumerated all came to me night after night as I lay awake, and I called for death . . . . it was this dread of work that finally took the ground away from under my feet. I felt in my heart that, with a weekly income of $20 to $25 I would persist and fight my mental disabilities, finding consolation in reading, studying, especially philosophy and writing. My idea would be not to write with the idea of making money, but of making literature.

I got cold feet whenever I thought of the sordid commercialism of present American authorship. My ideas and ideals, delusions, illusions, call them what you will, were too strong to face the facts.

I had wild ideas of laying my case before some rich man, or at least some institution endowed by one, seeing if they, out of pity, sympathy, or some other feeling, could be induced to allow me an income of $20 to $25 per week, and not require of me definite results.

I thought of going to sociologists, insanity experts, those whom we read so much about in the papers, who are always talking of reform, eugenics, social service; but the realization that these glittering generalities meant nothing to one poor, weak, degenerate individual like me, deterred me.

Two other reasons kept me back, the first self-respect; for despite my weaknesses and downfalls, I still had an inordinate pride, and repulsed pity, sympathy, and felt how humiliating it would be to depend on some one else like that even were such a wild idea possible.