The Journal of Arthur Stirling : ("The Valley of the Shadow") Part 51

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains, And feeds her grief with his remembered lay!

I have been sitting here from seven in the evening until three in the morning, and I can not write any more.

Only--think about this thing. Look up the facts and see if they are not true. These seven men _made_ England's poetry for a century; they made England's _thought_ for a century--they make it to-day! They are the inspiration of whole peoples, the sources of mult.i.tudes of n.o.ble deeds and purposes. What do you think in money would be represented by the value of these books alone? Enough to support ten thousand poets for a lifetime, do you think? And how many hundreds of thousands of students are hearing about them this day? How many young men and maidens are going out into the world owing all that they have that is beautiful to them? And all these authors of the day, all these critics and teachers, novelists and poets--how much of what they have that is true do they not owe to these men? Go ask them, go ask them!

--And you have it all because of the accident that these men were independent! You have all from six of them for that, and from the seventh you have nothing--yes, almost nothing--because he was poor! Because he was a hostler's son, and not a gentleman's son; and you sent him back to his gallipots and to his grave.

June 4th.

I wait to hear from the publisher merely as a matter of duty. I have never had the least idea that he will take the book.

I have made up my mind to drown myself. There is no mess about it, and men do not have to know of it.

I have often read of murder cases. They tie a rope around the body and a stone to the rope; but the stone slips out, or the rope wears, and then it is unpleasant. I used to say they were fools; why did they not get a dumb-bell or something like that, and a small chain. Then there would have been no trouble.

When I thought of that I smiled grimly. I am living on dry bread, and saving my money to buy a dumb-bell and a chain on Friday.

I pray most of the time. I have no longer the old ecstasy--such things do not come often in cities. But it will come once again before I die, that I know.

I have a strange att.i.tude toward death. To me it is nothing. There is, of course, the pain of drowning--it probably hurts to be strangled, but I do not think it will hurt as much as ten lines of The Captive hurt.

About the physical part of it, the "invisible corruption," I never think; it is enough that it will be invisible. And for the rest, death is nothing, it is the end. I have never shrunk from the thought of it, it does not come as a stranger to me now. I take it simply and naturally--it is the end. It is the end that comes to all things in this phantom-dance of being; to flowers and to music, to mountains and to planets, to histories, and to universes, and to men.

I said: "It must come some day. It may come any day. Love not thy life too much--know what thou art."

G.o.d can spare me. He got along without me once, and doubtless he can do it again. There are many things that I should like to see--I should like to see all the ages; but that was not my fate.

When I was young they taught me to be orthodox. And I see them stare at me now in horror. "Suicide!" they gasp. "Suicide!"

Yes!--Why not? Am I not the lord of mine own life, to end it as well as to live it?

And the law! Prate not of laws, I know of no laws, either of man or G.o.d; my law is the right and my holy will.

And the punishment! Well, and if your h.e.l.l be a reality, why, it is my home--it is the home of all true men. The sublime duty of being d.a.m.ned is ever my reply to theological impertinences.

--No, the sight of death does not thrill me in the least--when I stand upon the brink it will not thrill me. It is not fearful; what the weakest of men have done, I can do. And it is not sublime. Life is sublime, life thrills me; death is nothing.

June 5th.

To-day I wished that it were winter. A wonderful idea came to me--I am almost tempted to live and wait for winter. I said: I would choose one place where the money-blind and the folly-mad a.s.semble--where I have seen them and had my eyes burned by the sight. I would go to the opera-house on the opening night! I would go to the top gallery, and I would put my journal, my story, under my coat; and in the midst of the thing I would give one cry, to startle them; and I would dash down that long flight of steps, and shoot over the railing headfirst.

--Ha! That would make them think! They might read the book, then.

What place could be more fitted? In an opera-house meet, as nowhere else in this world that I know of, the two extremes of life--G.o.d and the devil. I mean on a Wagner night! Here is the inspiration of a sainted poet, here is ecstasy unthinkable, flung wide and glorious as the dawn; and here is all the sodden and brutal vulgarity of wealth, deaf, blind, and strutting in its insolent pomposity.

--I am very ill to-day--I have a splitting headache and I am weak. It is from trying to save too much money for the dumb-bell, I fear. But I laugh--what care I? My body is going to wreck--but what care I? Ah, it is a fine thing to be death-devoted, and freed from all the ills that flesh is heir to! I go my way--do what I please--hammer on and on, and let happen what will. What, old head!--wilt ache? I guess I can stop thy aching before long! And all ye mechanical miscellaneities--stomachs and what not!

_Thou_ wilt trouble me too? Do thy pleasure, go thy way--I go mine!

There is a kind of intoxication in it. I climb upon all these ills that used to frighten me--I mock at them, I am a G.o.d. I smite my head--I say, "I am done with thee, old head! I have thought with thee all the thoughts I have to think!"

I have made me right drunk upon life, yes, that is the truth; and now the feast is over, and I will smash the crockery! Come, boys, come!--Away with it! Through the window here with the head--look out of the way below there for the stomach--ha, ha!

--Is not that Shakespearian humor for you? Such a thing it is to be death-devoted!