Journal of Arthur Stirling | Page 4

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 gossiping about it.--But I am tired out.
* * * * *
The writing of a book is like the bearing of a child. But every birth-pang of the former lasts for hours; and it is months before the labor is done.
It is not merely the vision, the hour of exultation; that is but the setting of the task. Now you will take that ecstasy, and hold on to it, hold on with soul and body; you will keep yourself at