Journal of Arthur Stirling | Page 4

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!
And last Saturday I went out of the hell-house where I have been pent
so long, and I covered my face with my hands and fled away
home--away to the little corner that is mine. There I flung myself down
and sobbed like a child. It was relief--it was joy--it was fear! It was
everything! The book! The book! Then I got up--and the world seemed
to go behind me, and I was drunk. I heard a voice calling--it thundered
in my ears--that I was free--that my hour was come--that I might
live--that I might live--live! And I could have shouted it--I know that I
laughed it aloud. Every time I thought the thought it was like the
throbbing of wings to me--"Free! Free!"
No one can understand this--no one who has not a demon in his soul.
No one who does not know how I have been choked--what horrors I
have borne.
I am through with that--I did not think of that. I am free! They will
never have me back.
That motive alone would drive me to my work, would make me dare
anything. But I do not need that motive.
* * * * *

I think only of the book. I thought of it last Saturday, and it swept me
away out of myself. I had planned the opening scene; but then the
thought of the triumph-song took hold of me, and it drove me mad.
That song was what I had thought I could never do--I had never dared
to think of it. And it came to me--it came! Wild, incoherent,
overwhelming, it came, the victorious hymn. I could not think of
remembering it; it was not poetry--it was reality. I was the Captive, I
had won freedom--a faith and a vision!
So it throbbed on and on, and I was choked, and my head on fire, and
my hands tingling, until I sank down from sheer exhaustion--laughing
and sobbing, and talking to God as if He were in the room. I never
really believe in God except at such times; I can go through this
dreadful world for months, and never think if there be a God.--Here I
sit