a tragedy in blank verse, called The Captive; that drama forms the chief
theme of this journal. For the rest, it seems to me enough to quote this
notice, which appeared in the New York Times for June 9, 1902.

STIRLING.--By suicide in the Hudson River, poet and
man of genius, in the 22d year of his age, only son of
Richard T. and Grace Stirling, deceased, of Chicago.
Chicago papers please copy.

Arthur Stirling was in appearance a tall, dark-haired boy--he was really
only a boy--with a singularly beautiful face, and a strange wistful
expression of the eyes that I think will haunt me as long as I live. I made
him, somewhat externally and feebly, I fear, one of the characters in a
recently published novel. That he was a lonely spirit will be plain enough
from his writings; he lived among the poverty-haunted thousands of this
city, without (so he once told me) ever speaking to a living soul for a
week. Pecuniarily I could not help him--for though he was poor, I was
scarcely less so. At the time of his frightful death I had not seen him for
nearly two months--owing to circumstances which were in no way my fault,
but for which I can nevertheless not forgive myself.

The writing of The Captive, as described in these papers, was begun in
April, 1901. I was myself at that time in the midst of a struggle to have
a book published. It was not really published until late in that year--at
which time The Captive was finished and already several times rejected.
It was an understood thing between us that should my book succeed it would
mean freedom for both of us, but that, unfortunately, was not to be.

Early in April of 1902 I had succeeded in laying by provisions enough to
last me while I wrote another book, and I fled away to put up my tent in