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I confess that most of them were painful reading, for at no time does one reveal oneself so much as in one’s intimate correspondence. In short, I was soon put into possession of over one thousand specimens of my epistolary effusions.
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Eleanor Fitzgerald, had also preserved my Russian correspondence. My, niece, Stella Ballantine, had kept everything I had written her during my imprisonment in the Missouri penitentiary. Ben Reitman, Ben Capes, Jacob Margolis, Agnes Inglis, Harry Weinberger, Van, my romantic admirer Leon Bass, and scores of other friends readily responded to my request to send me my letters. Far from virtue bringing reward, it was my iniquity that gave me what I needed most - the true atmosphere of past days. Often I had been chided by my pal Sasha, otherwise known as Alexander Berkman, and by my other friends, for my proclivity to spread myself in letters. An old vice of mine came to my rescue: veritable mountains of letters I had written. I needed something that would help me re-create the atmosphere of my own personal life: the events, small or great, that had tossed me about emotionally. No further need to worry with such an array of co-workers. In the matter of European data I knew I could turn to the two best historians in our ranks: Max Nettlau and Rudolf Rocker.
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Leonard did his share, and Van spent all his free time in research work for me. Agnes, the founder of the Labadie Library in Detroit, containing the richest collection of radical and revolutionary material in America, came to my aid with her usual readiness. Van Valkenburgh, and others soon put my doubts to shame. Sceptic that I am, I had overlooked the magic power of friendship, which had so often in my life made mountains move.
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It was a problem I could see no solution for. I lacked even my personal set of the Mother Earth magazine, which I had published for twelve years. Almost everything in the way of books, correspondence, and similar material that I had accumulated during the thirty-five years of my life in the United States had been confiscated by the Department of Justice raiders and never returned. The great difficulty that faced me was lack of historical data for my work. I would not risk such a calamity, and I began to think seriously about writing my life. I discovered, much to my discomfiture, that old age, far from ripening wisdom and mellowness, is too often fraught with senility, narrowness, and petty rancour. My enforced European inactivity left me enough time to read a great deal, including biographies and autobiographies. Moreover, I always lacked the necessary leisure for concentrated writing. “When one has reached a good philosophic age,” I used to tell my friends, “capable of viewing the tragedies and comedies of life impersonally and detachedly - particularly one’s own life - one is likely to create an autobiography worth while.” Still feeling adolescently young in spite of advancing years, I did not consider myself competent to undertake such a task.
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I was living my life intensely - what need to write about it? Another reason for my reluctance was the conviction I entertained that one should write about one’s life only when one had ceased to stand in the very torrent of it. Suggestions that I write my memoirs came to me when I had barely begun to live, and continued all through the years.