cure birth.--Will I not have
earned a short lease of happiness, if I achieve fame for his sake?

I will barter all for one week,--no, one day--of happiness. I do not
wish to grow old, to outlive my illusions. Only a short respite from
cares and sorrow, a brief time of flowers, and music, and love, and
laughter, and ecstatic tears, and intense emotion. I can so well
understand the slave in the glorious "_Un nuit de Cleopatre_," who
resolved a life-time into twelve hours, and having no more left to
desire, drank death as calmly as it were a draught of wine.

_January_, 9, 18--.

"Elsie, my poor little sister, is ill. Only a childish ailment, but I
have not written for three days, and she has lain, feeble and languid,
in my arms, and I have told her stories. We have moved again, and here,
thank God! the furniture, and the carpets and the paper do not swear at
each other so violently. I say, thank God! with due reverence. I am
truly and devoutly grateful for the release from that sense of unrest
caused by the twisted red and green arabesques on the floor. Here all is
sombre. The walls are a dull shade, the carpet neutral, the furniture
the faded brocatelle dedicate to boarding-houses; but it is not so bad.
The golden light lies along the floor, and is reflected on my 'Birth of
Venus' on the wall. Above my desk is a small shelf of my best-loved
books,--loved now; perhaps I shall destroy them next year, having
absorbed all their nutriment, even as now, 'I burn all I used to
worship. I worship all I used to burn.' Under the bookrack is a copy of
Severn's last sketch of Keats, the vanquished, dying head of the slain
poet, more brutally killed than the world counts. The eyes are closed
and sunken; the mouth, once so prone to kiss, droops pitifully at the
corners; the beautiful temples are hollow. Underneath I have written the
words of de Vigny, the words as true as death, if as bitter: 'Hope is
the greatest of all our follies.' I need no other curb to my mad dreams
than this.

"It has been cold, so cold to-day. I left Elsie asleep, and went to the
office of the ---- Magazine with an article I wrote a month or so ago.
The truth is, Elsie should have a doctor, and I have no money to pay
him. I was almost sure Mr. ---- would take this. He was out, and I
waited a long time in vain, and finally walked back in the wind and
blowing dust, chilled to the heart. I wished to write in the afternoon,
but I was so beaten with the weathe