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2 to go back to it. Your criticism is the only influence that has led me to make any important change.

What you say about your advantage in years as an artist is obviously true. You know how I feel about that. But I know there is something finer between us than the relation of you as an artist, and myself as the artist you think I might be. You did throw off the life of fact more boldly, and take great chances than I. The sense of your superiority that I feel in this, is only the sense of honest joy in the triumphs of my friend.

As for the struggle -- the lines of Heine come to me

      "We do not take possession of our ideas
        They take possession of us
        They force us into the arena
        And compel us to fight them."

It is difficult for me to write of the struggle and myself. God knows I have a holy horror of posing as a martyr! Yet I have been defeated -- so far. For me, the issue is clearly drawn. Either I stay where I am, or make a complete getaway. When I came up to Ephraim to see you, I had intended to submerge completely. Once I walked back and forth in front of the labor agencies on Canal street, trying to get up courage to enroll with a lumber gang for the North Woods as time-keeper. Defeated by the second thought. "There ought to be a way out of this without sacrificing everything" And