What a thing is hope! I have been for two days chained in the most horrible kind of a place. Picture it--to stand all day and see low people stuffing themselves with food--the dirt and the grease and the stench and the endless hideous drudgery! And I five days out of the springing forest and the ecstasy of inspiration!--Truly, it is a thing to put one"s glory to a test! But I hardly feel it--I walk on air--deep back in my soul there is an organ song, I hear it all day, all day!
How soon will they write? I fly up-stairs each night, looking for a letter.
Hurry up! Hurry up!
--"_Pegasus im Joche_!"
July 13th.
The book! The book! I go thinking about it--when I come home I throw myself down on the bed and laugh with suppressed excitement. I think all day--they are reading it now, perhaps! Ah, my book! And perhaps I"ll find somebody at home there to see me about it to-night!
I look at the reviews--I am interested in all the books of the day now--because The Captive is going to be among them! How will it seem to see it there, in big letters?
And how will it seem to be known? I am not a fool--I know what will help me to my peace when I am out there in the woods again--and it will not be that the newspapers have been talking about me, and that the dames of high society have asked me to their tea-parties. But there are one or two men in this world that I should like to know. Perhaps as the author of a book that is known it would be possible.
--Yes, before I was one of the mob, and now I have shown what I can do.
July 15th.
The horror of that awful "eating-joint" grows on me every hour. I could not bear it much more--physically it makes me ill, and no amount of enthusiasm can make that better. I will not sell a second more of my time than I have to. I made up my mind that I would give up the place at the end of the week. The money will do me for another week after that, and by that time I will surely have heard from the publishers.
I"ll have to tell them, that"s all,--it is nothing to be ashamed of.
They"ll have to give me some money in advance. I can not live in that cesspool.
Yes, to-morrow and half of the next day,--that is all I will bear!
--I long sometimes to go and see them; but no, I can wait.
July 17th.
I treated myself to a long holiday this afternoon. I went up to the park, and walked and walked. Everything was in a tumult within me--I was clear of that last prison. And all the excitement and the power of that poem are still in me. I am restless, all on fire, stern, hungry, like a wind-storm.
Come not near me unless you wish for truth! Come not near me if you fear the G.o.ds!
To-day my thoughts went surging into the future. I shall have money!--I shall be free!--And what shall I do next? I counted up what I might have--even a slight success for the book would mean a fortune such as turned my head to think of. What would I do?
My mind pounced upon a new work--a work that I have dreamed of often. Would it be my next work? I thought--would I be able--would I dare? It is a grand thing.
I went on, and got to thinking of it; I almost forgot that I was not still in the woods. What a sweeping thing I see it!
The American! It would have to be a three-volume novel, I fear--it would be as huge as Les Miserables!
It is the Civil War! I am haunted by that fearful struggle. Is there anything more fearful in history, any more tremendous effort of the human spirit? And so far it has not made one great poem, one great drama, one great novel!
It was the furnace-fire in which this land was forged--this land which holds in its womb the future of the world--this land that is to give laws to the nations and teach mankind its destiny. I search the ages, and I find no struggle so fraught with meaning, with the woe and the terror and the agony of a desperate hope.
It must be all put into an art-work, I say! There is no theme that could thrill the men of this country more, that could lift them more, that could do more to make their hearts throb with pride. We sent all the best that we had--armies and armies of them--and they toiled and suffered, they rotted upon a thousand fields of horror. And their souls cry out to me, that it must not be for naught, that the fearful consecration must not be for naught.
The world is filled with historical fiction; it is the cant and the sham of the hour.--Bah!
--This is what I long to do; to take the agony of that struggle and live it and forge it into an art-work; to put upon a canvas the soul of it; to put it there, living and terrible, that the men of this land might know the heritage that is come down to them.
It would take years of toil, it would take money, too--I should have to go down there. But some day I shall do it!
I saw some of it to-day, and it made my blood go!
I saw a poet, young, sensitive, throbbing at the old, old wrong, at the black shame of our history; I saw him drawn into that fearful whirlpool of blood and pa.s.sion, driven mad with the pain and the horror of it; and I saw him drilled and hammered to a grim savageness, saw him fighting, day by day, with his spirit, forging it into an iron sword of war. He was haggard and hollow-eyed, hard, ruthless, desperate. He saw into the future, he saw the land he loved, the land he dreamed of--the Union! She stretched out her arms to him; she cried with the voices of unborn ages, she wrung her hands in the agony of her despair. And for her his heart beat, for her he was a madman, for her he marched in sun and in snow, for her he was torn and slashed, for her he waded through fields of slaughter. Of her he dreamed and sung--sung to the camps in the night-time, till armies were thrilled with his singing.
This was the thing of which he sang, the gaunt, grim poet: There is a monster, huge beyond thought, terrible, all-destroying; the name of it is Rebellion, and the end of it is Death! Day by day you grapple with it, day by day you hammer it, day by day you crush it. Down with it, down with it!
Finish it!
I heard that as a battle-cry: "Finish it!" I saw a man, wild and war-frenzied, riding a war-frenzied horse; he rode at the head of a squadron, bare-headed, sword in hand, demon-like--thundering down-hill upon a ma.s.s of men, stabbing, slashing, trampling, scattering! Above the roar of it all I heard his cry: "Finish it! Finish it!"
And afterward he staggered from his horse and knelt by the men he had killed, and wept.
--I saw him again. It was when the man of the hour had come at last; when the monster had met his master; when, day by day, they hammered it, the fire-spitting, death-dealing monster; when they closed with it in death-grapple in a tangled wilderness, where armies fought like demons in the dark, and the wounded were burned by the thousands. I saw companies of fainting, starving, agonized men, retreating, still battling, day by day; and I saw the wild horseman galloping on their track, slashing, trampling--and still with the battle-yell: "Finish it! Finish it!"
I saw him yet a third time. It was done, it was finished; and he lay wounded in a dark room, listening. Outside in the streets of Washington a great endless army marched by, the army of victory, of salvation; and the old war-flags waved, and the old war-songs echoed, and he heard the trampling of ten thousand feet--the rumbling of the old cannon--and the ocean-roaring of the vast throngs of men! A wild delirium of victory throbbed in his soul,--burned him up, as he lay there alone, dying of his pa.s.sion and his wounds. Born of the joy that throbbed in the air about him, born of the waving banners and the clashing trumpets and the trampling hosts and the shouting millions--a figure loomed up before him--a figure with eyes of flame and a form that towered like the mountains--with arms outstretched in rapture and robes that touched the corn-fields as she sped--angel, prophetess, G.o.ddess!--Liberty!
--And at her feet he sobbed out his life.