entally. What is the cause of my difficulty? said I. Something within
me seemed to reply, in the words of Lear, "Nothing comes of nothing."
Then I must seek a subject. I ran over a dozen in a few minutes, chose
one after another, and, though twenty thoughts very readily occurred
on each, I was fain to reject them all; some for wanting pith, some
for belonging to prose, and others for having been worn out in the
service of other poets. In a word, my eyes began to open on the truth,
and I felt convinced that _that_ only was poetry which a man
writes because he cannot help writing; the irrepressible effluence
of his secret being on every thing in sympathy with it,--a kind of
_flowering_ of the soul amid the warmth and the light of nature.
I am no poet, I exclaimed, and I will not disfigure Mr. Ames with
commonplace verses.

I know not how I should have borne this second disappointment, had not
the title of a new Novel, which then came into my head, suggested a
trial in that branch of letters. I will write a Novel. Having come to
this determination, the next thing was to collect materials. They must
be sought after, said I, for my late experiment has satisfied me that
I might wait for ever in my elbow-chair, and they would never come to
me; they must be toiled for,--not in books, if I would not deal in
second-hand,--but in the world, that inexhaustible storehouse of
all kinds of originals. I then turned over in my mind the various
characters I had met with in life; amongst these a few only seemed
fitted for any story, and those rather as accessories; such as a
politician who hated popularity, a sentimental grave-digger, and a
metaphysical rope-dancer; but for a hero, the grand nucleus of my
fable, I was sorely at a loss. This, however, did not discourage me. I
knew he might be found in the world, if I would only take the trouble
to look for him. For this purpose I jumped into the first stage-coach
that passed my door; it was immaterial whither bound, my object being
men, not places. My first day's journey offered nothing better than a
sailor who rebuked a member of Congress for swearing. But at the third
stage, on the second day, as we were changing horses, I had the good
fortune to light on a face which gave promise of all I wanted. It was
so remarkable that I could not take my eyes from it; the forehead
might have been called handsome but for a pair of enormous eyebrows,
that seemed to project from it like the quarter-gal