Back from sea Martin Eden came, homing for California with a
lover's desire. His store of money exhausted, he had shipped
before the mast on the treasure-hunting schooner; and the Solomon
Islands, after eight months of failure to find treasure, had
witnessed the breaking up of the expedition. The men had been paid
off in Australia, and Martin had immediately shipped on a deep-
water vessel for San Francisco. Not alone had those eight months
earned him enough money to stay on land for many weeks, but they
had enabled him to do a great deal of studying and reading.

His was the student's mind, and behind his ability to learn was the
indomitability of his nature and his love for Ruth. The grammar he
had taken along he went through again and again until his unjaded
brain had mastered it. He noticed the bad grammar used by his
shipmates, and made a point of mentally correcting and
reconstructing their crudities of speech. To his great joy he
discovered that his ear was becoming sensitive and that he was
developing grammatical nerves. A double negative jarred him like a
discord, and often, from lack of practice, it was from his own lips
that the jar came. His tongue refused to learn new tricks in a
day.

After he had been through the grammar repeatedly, he took up the
dictionary and added twenty words a day to his vocabulary. He
found that this was no light task, and at wheel or lookout he
steadily went over and over his lengthening list of pronunciations
and definitions, while he invariably memorized himself to sleep.
"Never did anything," "if I were," and "those things," were
phrases, with many variations, that he repeated under his breath in
order to accustom his tongue to the language spoken by Ruth. "And"
and "ing," with the "d" and "g" pronounced emphatically, he went
over thousands of times; and to his surprise he noticed that he was
beginning to speak cleaner and more correct English than the
officers themselves and the gentleman-adventurers in the cabin who
had financed the expedition.

The captain was a fishy-eyed Norwegian who somehow had fallen into
possession of a complete Shakespeare, which he never read, and
Martin had washed his clothes for him and in return been permitted
access to the precious volumes. For a time, so steeped was he in
the plays and in the many favorite passages that impressed
themselves almost without effort on his brain, that all the world
seemed to shape itself into forms of Elizabethan tragedy or comedy
and his very thoughts were in blank verse. It trained his ear and
gave him a fine appreciation for noble English; withal it
introduced into his mind much that was archaic and obsolete.

The eight months had been well spent, and, in addition to what he
had learned of right speaking and high thinking, he had learned
much of himself. Along with his humbleness because he knew so
little, there arose a conviction of power. He felt a sharp
gradation between himself and his shipmates, and was wise enough to
realize that the difference lay in potentiality rather than
achievement. What he could do, - they could do; but within him he
felt a confused ferment working that told him there was more in him
than he had done. He was tortured by the exquisite beauty of the
world, and wished that Ruth were there to share it with him. He
decided that he would describe to her many of the bits of South Sea
beauty. The creative spirit in him flamed up at the thought and
urged that he recreate this beauty for a wider audience than Ruth.
And then, in splendor and glory, came the great idea. He would
write. He would be one of the eyes through which the world saw,
one of the ears through which it heard, one of the hearts through
which it felt. He would write - everything - poetry and prose,
fiction and description, and plays like Shakespeare. There was
career and the way to win to Ruth. The men of literature were the
world's giants, and he conceived them to be far finer than the Mr.
Butlers who earned thirty thousand a year and could be Supreme
Court justices if they wanted to.

Once the idea had germinated, it mastered him, and the return
voyage to San Francisco was like a dream. He was drunken with
unguessed power and felt that he could do anything. In the midst
of the great and lonely sea he gained perspective. Clearly, and
for the first lime, he saw Ruth and her world. It was all
visualized in his mind as a concrete thing which he could take up
in his two hands and turn around and about and examine. There was
much that was dim and nebulous in that world, but he saw it as a
whole and not in detail, and he saw, also, the way to master it.
To write! The thought was fire in him. He would begin as soon as
he got back. The first thing he would do would be to describe the
voyage of the treasure-hunters. He would sell it to some San
Francisco newspaper. He would not tell Ruth anything about it, and
she would be surprised and pleased when she saw his name in print.
While he wrote, he could go on studying. There were twenty-four
hours in each day. He was invincible. He knew how to work, and
the citadels would go down before him. He would not have to go to
sea again - as a sailor; and for the instant he caught a vision of
a steam yacht. There were other writers who possessed steam
yachts. Of course, he cautioned himself, it would be slow
succeeding at first, and for a time he would be content to earn
enough money by his writing to enable him to go on studying. And
then, after some time, - a very indeterminate time, - when he had
learned and prepared himself, he would write the great things and
his name would be on all men's lips. But greater than that,
infinitely greater and greatest of all, he would have proved
himself worthy of Ruth. Fame was all very well, but it was for
Ruth that his splendid dream arose. He was not a fame-monger, but
merely one of God's mad lovers.

Arrived in Oakland, with his snug pay-day in his pocket, he took up
his old room at Bernard Higginbotham's and set to work. He did not
even let Ruth know he was back. He would go and see her when he
finished the article on the treasure-hunters. It was not so
difficult to abstain from seeing her, because of the violent heat
of creative fever that burned in him. Besides, the very article he
was writing would bring her nearer to him. He did not know how
long an article he should write, but he counted the words in a
double-page article in the Sunday supplement of the SAN FRANCISCO
EXAMINER, and guided himself by that. Three days, at white heat,
completed his narrative; but when he had copied it carefully, in a
large scrawl that was easy to read, he learned from a rhetoric he
picked up in the library that there were such things as paragraphs
and quotation marks. He had never thought of such things before;
and he promptly set to work writing the article over, referring
continually to the pages of the rhetoric and learning more in a day
about composition than the average schoolboy in a year. When he
had copied the article a second time and rolled it up carefully, he
read in a newspaper an item on hints to beginners, and discovered
the iron law that manuscripts should never be rolled and that they
should be written on one side of the paper. He had violated the
law on both counts. Also, he learned from the item that first-
class papers paid a minimum of ten dollars a column. So, while he
copied the manuscript a third time, he consoled himself by
multiplying ten columns by ten dollars. The product was always the
same, one hundred dollars, and he decided that that was better than
seafaring. If it hadn't been for his blunders, he would have
finished the article in three days. One hundred dollars in three
days! It would have taken him three months and longer on the sea
to earn a similar amount. A man was a fool to go to sea when he
could write, he concluded, though the money in itself meant nothing
to him. Its value was in the liberty it would get him, the
presentable garments it would buy him, all of which would bring him
nearer, swiftly nearer, to the slender, pale girl who had turned
his life back upon itself and given him inspiration.

He mailed the manuscript in a flat envelope, and addressed it to
the editor of the SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER. He had an idea that
anything accepted by a paper was published immediately, and as he
had sent the manuscript in on Friday he expected it to come out on
the following Sunday. He conceived that it would be fine to let
that event apprise Ruth of his return. Then, Sunday afternoon, he
would call and see her. In the meantime he was occupied by another
idea, which he prided himself upon as being a particularly sane,
careful, and modest idea. He would write an adventure story for
boys and sell it to THE YOUTH'S COMPANION. He went to the free
reading-room and looked through the files of THE YOUTH'S COMPANION.
Serial stories, he found, were usually published in that weekly in
five instalments of about three thousand words each. He discovered
several serials that ran to seven instalments, and decided to write
one of that length.

He had been on a whaling voyage in the Arctic, once - a voyage that
was to have been for three years and which had terminated in
shipwreck at the end of six months. While his imagination was
fanciful, even fantastic at times, he had a basic love of reality
that compelled him to write about the things he knew. He knew
whaling, and out of the real materials of his knowledge he
proceeded to manufacture the fictitious adventures of the two boys
he intended to use as joint heroes. It was easy work, he decided
on Saturday evening. He had completed on that day the first
instalment of three thousand words - much to the amusement of Jim,
and to the open derision of Mr. Higginbotham, who sneered
throughout meal-time at the "litery" person they had discovered in
the family.

Martin contented himself by picturing his brother-in-law's surprise
on Sunday morning when he opened his EXAMINER and saw the article
on the treasure-hunters. Early that morning he was out himself to
the front door, nervously racing through the many-sheeted
newspaper. He went through it a second time, very carefully, then
folded it up and left it where he had found it. He was glad he had
not told any one about his article. On second thought he concluded
that he had been wrong about the speed with which things found
their way into newspaper columns. Besides, there had not been any
news value in his article, and most likely the editor would write
to him about it first.

After breakfast he went on with his serial. The words flowed from
his pen, though he broke off from the writing frequently to look up
definitions in the dictionary or to refer to the rhetoric. He
often read or re-read a chapter at a time, during such pauses; and
he consoled himself that while he was not writing the great things
he felt to be in him, he was learning composition, at any rate, and
training himself to shape up and express his thoughts. He toiled
on till dark, when he went out to the reading-room and explored
magazines and weeklies until the place closed at ten o'clock. This
was his programme for a week. Each day he did three thousand
words, and each evening he puzzled his way through the magazines,
taking note of the stories, articles, and poems that editors saw
fit to publish. One thing was certain: What these multitudinous
writers did he could do, and only give him time and he would do
what they could not do. He was cheered to read in BOOK NEWS, in a
paragraph on the payment of magazine writers, not that Rudyard
Kipling received a dollar per word, but that the minimum rate paid
by first-class magazines was two cents a word. THE YOUTH'S
COMPANION was certainly first class, and at that rate the three
thousand words he had written that day would bring him sixty
dollars - two months' wages on the sea!

On Friday night he finished the serial, twenty-one thousand words
long. At two cents a word, he calculated, that would bring him
four hundred and twenty dollars. Not a bad week's work. It was
more money than he had ever possessed at one time. He did not know
how he could spend it all. He had tapped a gold mine. Where this
came from he could always get more. He planned to buy some more
clothes, to subscribe to many magazines, and to buy dozens of
reference books that at present he was compelled to go to the
library to consult. And still there was a large portion of the
four hundred and twenty dollars unspent. This worried him until
the thought came to him of hiring a servant for Gertrude and of
buying a bicycle for Marion.

He mailed the bulky manuscript to THE YOUTH'S COMPANION, and on
Saturday afternoon, after having planned an article on pearl-
diving, he went to see Ruth. He had telephoned, and she went
herself to greet him at the door. The old familiar blaze of health
rushed out from him and struck her like a blow. It seemed to enter
into her body and course through her veins in a liquid glow, and to
set her quivering with its imparted strength. He flushed warmly as
he took her hand and looked into her blue eyes, but the fresh
bronze of eight months of sun hid the flush, though it did not
protect the neck from the gnawing chafe of the stiff collar. She
noted the red line of it with amusement which quickly vanished as
she glanced at his clothes. They really fitted him, - it was his
first made-to-order suit, - and he seemed slimmer and better
modelled. In addition, his cloth cap had been replaced by a soft
hat, which she commanded him to put on and then complimented him on
his appearance. She did not remember when she had felt so happy.
This change in him was her handiwork, and she was proud of it and
fired with ambition further to help him.

But the most radical change of all, and the one that pleased her
most, was the change in his speech. Not only did he speak more
correctly, but he spoke more easily, and there were many new words
in his vocabulary. When he grew excited or enthusiastic, however,
he dropped back into the old slurring and the dropping of final
consonants. Also, there was an awkward hesitancy, at times, as he
essayed the new words he had learned. On the other hand, along
with his ease of expression, he displayed a lightness and
facetiousness of thought that delighted her. It was his old spirit
of humor and badinage that had made him a favorite in his own
class, but which he had hitherto been unable to use in her presence
through lack of words and training. He was just beginning to
orientate himself and to feel that he was not wholly an intruder.
But he was very tentative, fastidiously so, letting Ruth set the
pace of sprightliness and fancy, keeping up with her but never
daring to go beyond her.

He told her of what he had been doing, and of his plan to write for
a livelihood and of going on with his studies. But he was
disappointed at her lack of approval. She did not think much of
his plan.

"You see," she said frankly, "writing must be a trade, like
anything else. Not that I know anything about it, of course. I
only bring common judgment to bear. You couldn't hope to be a
blacksmith without spending three years at learning the trade - or
is it five years! Now writers are so much better paid than
blacksmiths that there must be ever so many more men who would like
to write, who - try to write."

"But then, may not I be peculiarly constituted to write?" he
queried, secretly exulting at the language he had used, his swift
imagination throwing the whole scene and atmosphere upon a vast
screen along with a thousand other scenes from his life - scenes
that were rough and raw, gross and bestial.

The whole composite vision was achieved with the speed of light,
producing no pause in the conversation, nor interrupting his calm
train of thought. On the screen of his imagination he saw himself
and this sweet and beautiful girl, facing each other and conversing
in good English, in a room of books and paintings and tone and
culture, and all illuminated by a bright light of steadfast
brilliance; while ranged about and fading away to the remote edges
of the screen were antithetical scenes, each scene a picture, and
he the onlooker, free to look at will upon what he wished. He saw
these other scenes through drifting vapors and swirls of sullen fog
dissolving before shafts of red and garish light. He saw cowboys
at the bar, drinking fierce whiskey, the air filled with obscenity
and ribald language, and he saw himself with them drinking and
cursing with the wildest, or sitting at table with them, under
smoking kerosene lamps, while the chips clicked and clattered and
the cards were dealt around. He saw himself, stripped to the
waist, with naked fists, fighting his great fight with Liverpool
Red in the forecastle of the Susquehanna; and he saw the bloody
deck of the John Rogers, that gray morning of attempted mutiny, the
mate kicking in death-throes on the main-hatch, the revolver in the
old man's hand spitting fire and smoke, the men with passion-
wrenched faces, of brutes screaming vile blasphemies and falling
about him - and then he returned to the central scene, calm and
clean in the steadfast light, where Ruth sat and talked with him
amid books and paintings; and he saw the grand piano upon which she
would later play to him; and he heard the echoes of his own
selected and correct words, "But then, may I not be peculiarly
constituted to write?"

"But no matter how peculiarly constituted a man may be for
blacksmithing," she was laughing, "I never heard of one becoming a
blacksmith without first serving his apprenticeship."

"What would you advise?" he asked. "And don't forget that I feel
in me this capacity to write - I can't explain it; I just know that
it is in me."

"You must get a thorough education," was the answer, "whether or
not you ultimately become a writer. This education is
indispensable for whatever career you select, and it must not be
slipshod or sketchy. You should go to high school."

"Yes - " he began; but she interrupted with an afterthought:-

"Of course, you could go on with your writing, too."

"I would have to," he said grimly.

"Why?" She looked at him, prettily puzzled, for she did not quite
like the persistence with which he clung to his notion.

"Because, without writing there wouldn't be any high school. I
must live and buy books and clothes, you know."

"I'd forgotten that," she laughed. "Why weren't you born with an
income?"

"I'd rather have good health and imagination," he answered. "I can
make good on the income, but the other things have to be made good
for - " He almost said "you," then amended his sentence to, "have
to be made good for one."

"Don't say 'make good,'" she cried, sweetly petulant. "It's slang,
and it's horrid."

He flushed, and stammered, "That's right, and I only wish you'd
correct me every time."

"I - I'd like to," she said haltingly. "You have so much in you
that is good that I want to see you perfect."

He was clay in her hands immediately, as passionately desirous of
being moulded by her as she was desirous of shaping him into the
image of her ideal of man. And when she pointed out the
opportuneness of the time, that the entrance examinations to high
school began on the following Monday, he promptly volunteered that
he would take them.

Then she played and sang to him, while he gazed with hungry
yearning at her, drinking in her loveliness and marvelling that
there should not be a hundred suitors listening there and longing
for her as he listened and longed.