"'Ever since you got that cheque for a story last winter Elizabeth's been wondering if she oughtn't to let you write,' Cousin Jimmy told me. 'But she couldn't bring herself to back down till Aunt Nancy's letter gave her the excuse. Money makes the Murray mare go, Emily. Want some more Yankee stamps?'
"Mrs. Kent has told Teddy he can go for another year. After that he doesn't know what will happen. So we are all going back and I am so happy that I want to write it in Italics.
"September 10, 19...
"I have been elected president of the Senior class for this year. AND the Skulls and Owls sent me a notice that I had been elected a member of their august fraternity without the formality of an application.
"Evelyn Blake, by the way, is at present laid up with tonsilitis!
"I accepted the presidency... but I wrote a note to the Skull and Owl declining membership with awful politeness.
"After black-beaning me last year, indeed!
"October 7, 19...
"There was great excitement to-day in class when Dr. Hardy made a certain announcement. Kathleen Darcy's uncle, who is a Professor of McGill, is visiting here, and he has taken it into his head to offer a prize for the best poem, written by a pupil of Shrewsbury High School... said prize being a complete set of Parkman. The poems must be handed in by the first of November, and are to be 'not less than twenty lines, and no more than sixty.' Sounds as if a tape- measure was the first requisite. I have been wildly hunting through my Jimmy-books to-night and have decided to send in Wild Grapes. It is my second best poem. A Song of Sixpence is my best, but it has only fifteen lines and to add any more would spoil it. I think I can improve Wild Grapes a bit. There are two or three words in it I've always been dubious about. They don't exactly express fully what I want to say, but I can't find any others that do, either. I wish one could coin words, as I used to do long ago when I wrote letters to Father and just invented a word whenever I wanted one. But then, Father would have understood the words if he had ever seen the letters... while I am afraid the judges in the contest wouldn't.
"Wild Grapes should certainly win the prize. This isn't conceit or vanity or presumption. It's just KNOWING. If the prize were for mathematics Kath Darcy should win it. If it were for beauty Hazel Ellis would win it. If it were for all round proficiency, Perry Miller... for elocution, Ilse... for drawing, Teddy. But since it is for poetry, E. B. Starr is the one!
"We are studying Tennyson and Keats in Senior Literature this year. I like Tennyson but sometimes he enrages me. He is beautiful... not TOO beautiful, as Keats is... the Perfect Artist. But he never lets us forget the artist... we are always conscious of it... he is never swept away by some splendid mountain torrent of feeling. Not he... he flows on serenely between well-ordered banks and carefully laid- out gardens. And no matter how much one loves a garden one doesn't want to be cooped up in it ALL the time... one likes an excursion now and then into the wilderness. At least Emily Byrd Starr does... to the sorrow of her relations.
"Keats IS too full of beauty. When I read his poetry I feel stifled in roses and long for a breath of frosty air or the austerity of a chill mountain peak. But, oh, he has SOME lines...
"Magic casements opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faerylands forlorn...
"When I read them I always feel a sort of despair! WHAT is the use of trying to do what HAS been done, once and for all?
"But I found some other lines that inspire me... I have written them on the index-page of my new Jimmy-book.
"He ne'er is crowned With immortality who fears to follow Where airy voices lead.
"Oh, it's true. We must follow our 'airy voices,' follow them through every discouragement and doubt and disbelief till they lead us to our City of Fulfilment, wherever it may be.
"I had four rejections in the mail to-day, raucously shrieking failure at me. Airy Voices grow faint in such a clamour. But I'll hear them again. And I WILL follow... I will not be discouraged. Years ago I wrote a 'vow'... I found it the other day in an old packet in my cupboard... that I would 'climb the Alpine Path and write my name on the scroll of fame.'
"I'll keep on climbing!
"October 20, 19...
"I read my Chronicles of an Old Garden over the other night. I think I can improve it considerably, now that Aunt Elizabeth has lifted the ban. I wanted Mr. Carpenter to read it, but he said,
"'Lord, girl, I can't wade through all that stuff. My eyes are bad. What is it... a book? Jade, it will be time ten years from now for you to be writing books.'
"'I've got to practise,' I said indignantly.
"'Oh, practise... practise... but don't try out the results on me. I'm too old... I really am, Jade. I don't mind a short... a very short story... now and then... but let a poor old devil off the books.'
"I might ask Dean what he thinks of it. But Dean DOES laugh now at my ambitions... very cautiously and kindly... but he DOES laugh. And Teddy thinks everything I write perfect, so he's no use as a critic. I wonder... I wonder if any publisher would accept The Chronicles? I'm sure I've seen books of the kind that weren't MUCH better.
"November 11, 19...
"This evening I spent "expurgating" a novel for Mr. Towers' use and behoof. When Mr. Towers was away in August on his vacation the sub-editor, Mr. Grady, began to run a serial in the Times called A Bleeding Heart. Instead of getting A. P. A. stuff, as Mr. Towers always does, Mr. Grady simply bought the reprint of a sensational and sentimental English novel at the Shoppe and began publishing it. It was very long and only about half of it has appeared. Mr. Towers saw that it would run all winter in its present form. So he bade me take it and cut out 'all unnecessary stuff.' I have followed instruction mercilessly... 'cutting out' most of the kisses and embraces, two-thirds of the love-making and all the descriptions, with the happy results that I have reduced it to about a quarter of its normal length; and all I can say is may heaven have mercy on the soul of the compositor who has to set it in its present mutilated condition.
"Summer and autumn have gone. It seems to me they go more quickly than they used to. The golden-rod has turned white in the corners of the Land of Uprightness and the frost lies like a silver scarf on the ground o' mornings. The evening winds that go 'piping down the valleys wild' are heart-broken searchers, seeking for things loved and lost, calling in vain on elf and fay. For the fairy folk, if they be not all fled afar to the southlands, must be curled up asleep in the hearts of the firs or among the roots of the ferns.
"And every night we have murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson across the harbour, with a star above them like a saved soul gazing with compassionate eyes into pits of torment where sinful spirits are being purged from the stains of earthly pilgrimage.
"Would I dare to show the above sentence to Mr. Carpenter? I would NOT. Therefore there is something fearfully wrong with it.
"I know what's wrong with it, now that I've written it in cold blood. It's 'fine writing.' And yet it's just what I felt when I stood on the hill beyond the Land of Uprightness to-night and looked across the harbour. And who cares what this old journal thinks?
"December 2, 19...