“A year ago I believed for two years.  One of those years is yet to run.  And I do believe, upon my honor and my soul, that before that year is run I shall have succeeded.  You remember what you told me long ago, that I must serve my apprenticeship to writing.  Well, I have served it.  I have crammed it and telescoped it.  With you at the end awaiting me, I have never shirked.  Do you know, I have forgotten what it is to fall peacefully asleep.  A few million years ago I knew what it was to sleep my fill and to awake naturally from very glut of sleep.  I am awakened always now by an alarm clock.  If I fall asleep early or late, I set the alarm accordingly; and this, and the putting out of the lamp, are my last conscious actions.”

“When I begin to feel drowsy, I change the heavy book I am reading for a lighter one.  And when I doze over that, I beat my head with my knuckles in order to drive sleep away.  Somewhere I read of a man who was afraid to sleep.  Kipling wrote the story.  This man arranged a spur so that when unconsciousness came, his naked body pressed against the iron teeth.  Well, I’ve done the same.  I look at the time, and I resolve that not until midnight, or not until one o’clock, or two o’clock, or three o’clock, shall the spur be removed.  And so it rowels me awake until the appointed time.  That spur has been my bed-mate for months.  I have grown so desperate that five and a half hours of sleep is an extravagance.  I sleep four hours now.  I am starved for sleep.  There are times when I am light-headed from want of sleep, times when death, with its rest and sleep, is a positive lure to me, times when I am haunted by Longfellow’s lines: 

   “’The sea is still and deep;
   All things within its bosom sleep;
   A single step and all is o’er,
   A plunge, a bubble, and no more.’

“Of course, this is sheer nonsense.  It comes from nervousness, from an overwrought mind.  But the point is:  Why have I done this?  For you.  To shorten my apprenticeship.  To compel Success to hasten.  And my apprenticeship is now served.  I know my equipment.  I swear that I learn more each month than the average college man learns in a year.  I know it, I tell you.  But were my need for you to understand not so desperate I should not tell you.  It is not boasting.  I measure the results by the books.  Your brothers, to-day, are ignorant barbarians compared with me and the knowledge I have wrung from the books in the hours they were sleeping.  Long ago I wanted to be famous.  I care very little for fame now.  What I want is you; I am more hungry for you than for food, or clothing, or recognition.  I have a dream of laying my head on your breast and sleeping an aeon or so, and the dream will come true ere another year is gone.”