speaking of what he calls his "crucifixion," he wrote:

"Only great sorrow keeps us close, and that is why, the first night
after one of my deepest quarrels with my mother, I picked out a
five-cent lodging-house, overlooking my home, to pass the night of my
damnation in sight of the lost paradise. I never had any reason, or I
would have lost it. Let me hope that I am guided by something deeper
than that. All my life I have felt the undertone of society; it has
swept me to the depths, which I touched lovingly and fearfully with my
lips.

"Whenever and wherever I have touched the depths, and it has been
frequent and prolonged, and have seen the proletarian face to face,
naked spiritually and physically, the appeal in his eyes is irresistible
and irrefutable. I must do something for him or else I am lost to
myself. If I should ever let an occasion go by I am sure I never could
recover from the feeling that something irreparable had happened to me.
I should not mind failure, but to fail here and in my own eyes is to be
forever lost and eternally damned. This looks like the religion of my
youth under another guise, but I must find imperishable harmony
somewhere. The apathy of the mass oppresses me into a hopeless
helplessness which may account for my stagnation, my ineffectiveness, my
impotence, my stupidity, my crudeness, and my despair. I have always
felt lop-sided, physically, especially in youth. My awkwardness became,
too, a state of mind at the mercy of any spark of suggestion. My
subjectively big head I tried to compress into a little hat, my
objectively large hands concealed themselves in subjective pockets, my
poor generous feet went the way of the author of _Pilgrim's Progress_.
The result is a lop-sided mind, developed monstrously in certain
sensitive directions, otherwise not at all. A born stumbler in this
world, I naturally lurched up against society--but, as often happens I
have lost the thread of my thought: my thoughts, at the critical moment,
frequently desert me, as my family did; they seem to carry on an
alluring flirtation, and when I think them near they suddenly wave me
from the distance. But, like a lover, I will follow on--follow on to
platonic intercourse with my real mistress, the proletarian. And soul
there is there. I have met as fathomless spirits among the workers as
one will meet with anywhere. Art never has fathomed them, and may never
be able to do so. Often have I stood dumbfounded before