for California.
When his store of money was exhausted, he had shipped on a treasure-hunting schooner; and after eight months of failure to find treasure, the expedition had broken up.
The men had been paid off in Australia, and Martin had immediately returned to San Francisco. Not only 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.
He went through the grammar he had taken again and again, until his brain had mastered it. He noticed the bad grammar used by his shipmates. Now a double negative jarred him like a discord.
After he had mastered the grammar book, 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.
The captain of the schooner had somehow fallen into possession of a complete Shakespeare, which he never read, and Martin had washed his clothes for him, and in return he had been permitted access to the precious volumes.
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 decided that he would describe many of the bits of South Sea beauty to Ruth. The creative spirit in him flamed up and then 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 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.
Once the idea had germinated, it mastered him, and the return voyage to San Francisco was like a dream. 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 knew how to work, and the citadels would go down before him. Of course, he cautioned himself, it would be hard 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 this splendid dream arose.
When he returned to Oakland, 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. 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 had 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. 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. 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 clothes 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.
A week went by and then another week. His article was not yet published. 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.
In the meantime he worked at a serial story for boys. 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 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. One thing was certain. What the multitudinous writers did he could do, and only give him time, and he would do what they could not do.
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 planned to buy some more clothes, to subscribe to many magazines, and to buy dozens of reference-books. 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 Marian, his younger sister.
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.
She noted the change in his appearance. 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.
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 must get a thorough education first,” she said.
“This education is indispensable for whatever career you select. You should go to high school.”
“Yes…” he began; but she interrupted:
“Of course, you could go on with your writing, too.”
“I would have to,” he said grimly.
“Why?” She looked at him puzzled.
“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 prefer good health and imagination,” he answered.
Exercises
1. Listen to the chapter with your book closed and choose the correct answer.
