Journal of Arthur Stirling | Page 2

would keep his courage up, that he was pretty sure he would come out
all right.
I did not expect him to write often--I knew that he was too poor for that;
but after six weeks had passed and I had not heard from him at all, I
wrote to a friend to go and see him. It developed that he had moved.
The lodging-house keeper could only say that he had left her his
baggage, being unable to pay his rent; and that he "looked sick." Where
he went she did not know, and all efforts of mine to find him were of
no avail. The only person that I knew of to ask was a certain young girl,

a typewriter, who had known him for years, and who had worshiped
him with a strange and terrible passion--who would have been his wife,
or his slave, if he had not been as iron in such things, a man so lost in
his vision that I suppose he always thought she was lost in it too. This
girl had copied his manuscripts for years, with the plea that he might
pay her when he "succeeded"; and she has all of his manuscripts now,
except what I have, if she is alive. All that we could learn was that she
had "gone away"; I feel pretty certain that she went in search of him.
In addition, all that I have to tell is that on Monday, June 9th last I
received a large express package from Arthur. It was sent from New
York, but marked as coming from another person--evidently to avoid
giving an address of his own. Upon opening it I found two packages,
one of them carefully sealed and marked upon the outside, The Captive;
the other was the manuscript of this journal, and upon the top of it was
the following letter:
MY DEAR ----: You have no doubt been wondering what has become
of me. I have been having a hard time of it. I wish I could find some
way to make this thing a little easier, but I can not. When you read this
letter I shall be dead. There is nothing that I can tell you about it that
you will not read in the papers I send you. It is simply that I was born
to be an artist, and that as anything else I can not live. The burden that
has been laid upon me I can not bear another day. I have told the whole
story of it in this book--I have kept myself alive for months, sick and
weeping with agony, in order that I might tear it out of my heart and get
it written. It has been my last prayer that the struggle my life has been
may somehow not be useless. There will come others after me--others
perhaps keener than I--and oh, the world must not kill them all!
You will take this manuscript, please, and go over it, and cut out what
you like to make it printable, and write a few words to make people
understand about it. And then see if any one will publish it. You know
more about all these things than I do. If it should sell, keep part of the
money for your own work and give the rest to poor Ellen. As to The
Captive--I all but burned it, as you will read; but keep it, sealed as I
have sealed it, for two years, and then offer it to some publishers--to
others than the nine who have already rejected it. If you can not find
any one to take it, then burn it, or keep it for love, I do not care which.
I am writing this on Thursday night, and I am almost dead. I mean to

get some money to-morrow, and then to buy a ticket for as far up the
Hudson as I can go. In the evening I mean to find a steep bank, and,
with a heavy dumb-bell I have bought, and a strong rope, I think I can
find the peace that I have been seeking.
The first thing that I have to say to you about it is, that when you get
this letter it will be over and done, and that I want you, for God's sake,
not to make any fuss. No one will find my body and no one will care
about it. You need not think it necessary to notify the
newspapers--what I'm sending you here is literature and not journalism.
I have no earthly belongings left except these MSS., upon which you
will have to pay the toll. I have written to M----, a man who once did
some typewriting for me, asking him to use a dollar