The book! The book! This day, Saturday,
the sixth day of April, 1901, I begin the book!
I have never kept a journal—I have been
too busy living; but to-day I begin a journal.
I am so built that I can do but one thing at a time.
Now that I have begun The Captive, I must be haunted
with it all day; when I am not writing it I must be
dreaming it, or restless because I am not. Therefore
it occurred to me that in the hours of weariness I
would write about it what was in my mind—what
fears and what hopes; why and how I write it will
be a story in itself, and some day I think it will
be read.
* * * *
*
I have come to the last stage of the fight, and I
see the goal. I will tell the story, and by and
by wise editors can print it in the Appendix!
Yesterday I was a cable-car conductor, and to-day
I am a poet!
I know of some immortal poems that were written by
a druggist’s clerk, and some by a gager of liquid
barrels, but none by a cable-car conductor. “It
sounds interesting, tell us about it!” says the
reader. I shall, but not to-day.
To-day I begin the book!
* * * *
*
I did not write that on April 6th, I wrote it a month
ago—one day when I was thinking about this.
I put it there now, because it will do to begin; but
I had no jests in my heart on April 6th.
* * * *
*
April 10th.
I have been for four days in a kind of frenzy.
I have come down like a collapsed balloon, and I think
I have had enough for once.
I have written the opening scene, but not finally;
and then I got into the middle—I could
not help it. How in God’s name I am ever
to do this fearful thing, I don’t know; it frightens
me, and sometimes I lose all heart.
* * * *
*
I suppose I shall have to begin again tonight.
I must eat something first, though. That is one
of my handicaps: I wear myself out and have to
stop and eat. Will anybody ever love me for this
work, will anybody ever understand it?
I suppose I can get back where I was yesterday, but
always it grows harder, and more stern. I set
my teeth together.
* * * *
*
It was like the bursting of an overstrained dam, these
last four days. How long I have been pent up—eighteen
months! And eighteen months seems like a lifetime
to me. I have been a bloodhound in the leash,
hungering—hungering for this thing, and
the longing has piled up in me day by day. Sometimes
it has been more than I could bear; and when the time
was near, I was so wild that I was sick. The
book! The book! Freedom and the book!
