with clenched fists
and burning face, till at last, the repression of his contending
thoughts all but suffocated him, and he flung himself before his table
and began to write. For a time, his pen seemed to travel of itself;
words came to him without searching, shaping themselves into
phrases,--the phrases building themselves up to great, forcible
sentences, full of eloquence, of fire, of passion. As his prose grew
more exalted, it passed easily into the domain of poetry. Soon the
cadence of his paragraphs settled to an ordered beat and rhythm, and in
the end Presley had thrust aside his journal and was once more writing
verse.

He picked up his incomplete poem of "The Toilers," read it hastily a
couple of times to catch its swing, then the Idea of the last verse--the
Idea for which he so long had sought in vain--abruptly springing to his
brain, wrote it off without so much as replenishing his pen with ink.
He added still another verse, bringing the poem to a definite close,
resuming its entire conception, and ending with a single majestic
thought, simple, noble, dignified, absolutely convincing.

Presley laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair, with the
certainty that for one moment he had touched untrod heights. His hands
were cold, his head on fire, his heart leaping tumultuous in his breast.

Now at last, he had achieved. He saw why he had never grasped the
inspiration for his vast, vague, IMPERSONAL Song of the West. At the
time when he sought for it, his convictions had not been aroused; he
had not then cared for the People. His sympathies had not been touched.
Small wonder that he had missed it. Now he was of the People; he had
been stirred to his lowest depths. His earnestness was almost a frenzy.
He BELIEVED, and so to him all things were possible at once.

Then the artist in him reasserted itself. He became more interested in
his poem, as such, than in the cause that had inspired it. He went over
it again, retouching it carefully, changing a word here and there, and
improving its rhythm. For the moment, he forgot the People, forgot his
rage, his agitation of the previous hour, he remembered only that he had
written a great poem.

Then doubt intruded. After all, was it so great? Did not its sublimity
overpass a little the bounds of the ridiculous? Had he seen true? Had he
failed again? He re-read the poem carefully; and it seemed all at once
to lose force.

By now, Presley could not tell whether w