He had just taken from his trunk the manuscript of a poem begun the preceding Sunday afternoon, and he had some ideas he wanted to fix upon paper before they maliciously seized the first opportunity to vanish, for they were but gossamer.

Bibbs was pleased with the beginnings of his poem, and if he could carry it through he meant to dare greatly with it--he would venture it upon an editor.

For he had his plan of life now: his day would be of manual labor and thinking--he could think of his friend and he could think in cadences for poems, to the crashing of the strong machine--and if his father turned him out of home and out of the Works, he would work elsewhere and live elsewhere.
His father had the right, and it mattered very little to Bibbs--he faced the prospect of a working-man's lodging-house without trepidation.

He could find a washstand to write upon, he thought; and every evening when he left Mary he would write a little; and he would write on holidays and on Sundays--on Sundays in the afternoon.

In a lodging-house, at least he wouldn't be interrupted by his sister-in-law's choosing the immediate vicinity of his door for conversations evidently important to herself, but merely disturbing to him.