LITMIR.BIZ

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reading.

      He mastered the grammar and noticed the bad grammar used by his shipmates. He took the dictionary and started to add twenty words a day to his vocabulary. He found that this was not an easy task. He repeated new words in order to accustom his tongue to the language spoken by Ruth.

      The captain possessed of a complete Shakespeare, which he never read, and Martin had washed his clothes for him and received the permission to read the precious volumes.

      He was touched 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 the South Sea beauty. But soon he understood that he would describe the beauty of the ocean for a wider audience than Ruth. And then came the great idea. He will write! He will write – everything – poetry and prose, fiction and description, and plays like Shakespeare. It is the way to win Ruth. The men of literature were the world’s giants, greater than Mr. Butlers.

      To write! This thought was fire in him.

      So he entered his old room at Bernard Higginbotham’s and set to work. He did not tell Ruth that he was back. He did not know how long an article he would write, but he counted the words in a article in the SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER. His writing lasted for three days. Also, he learned that first-class papers paid a minimum of ten dollars a column. So one hundred dollars! and he decided that that was better than seafaring.

      He mailed the manuscript in a big envelope, and addressed it to the editor of the SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER. He had an idea that everything sent to a newspaper was published immediately. Then he decided to write an adventure story for boys and sell it to THE YOUTH’S COMPANION.

      He wanted to write about the things he knew. It was easy work, he decided on Saturday evening. He had completed on that day the first instalment of three thousand words.

      After breakfast he went on with his story. He often read or re-read a chapter. This was his programme for a week. Each day he did three thousand words, and each evening he studies stories, articles, and poems that editors saw fit to publish. One thing was certain: What these writers did he could do, and only give him time and he would do what they could not do. He was glad to read in BOOK NEWS that Rudyard Kipling received a dollar per word, and 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 story, 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 many useful books. And still there was a large portion of the four hundred and twenty dollars unspent. Finally, he decided to hire a servant for Gertrude and to buy a bicycle for Marion.

      He mailed the big manuscript to THE YOUTH’S COMPANION, and on Saturday afternoon he went to see Ruth. He had telephoned, and she went herself to greet him at the door. He flushed warmly as he took her hand and looked into her blue eyes. She noted his clothes. They really fitted him, – it was his first made-to-order suit. Ruth did not remember when she had felt so happy. This change in him was her handiwork, and she was proud of it.

      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 displayed a lightness and facetiousness of thought that delighted her.

      He told her of what he had been doing, and of his plan to write for a livelihood and to go on with his studies. But she did not think much of his plan.

      “You see,” she said frankly, “writing must be a trade, like anything else. You can’t become a blacksmith without spending three – or five! – years at learning the trade.”

      “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 good education,” was the answer, “You must go to high school.”

      “Yes – ” he began; but she interrupted:

      “Of course, you can go on with your writing, too.”

      “I will,” he said grimly.

      “Why?” She looked at him, prettily puzzled.

      “Because I must live and buy books and clothes, you know.”

      “I forgot that,” she laughed. “Why weren’t you born with an income?”

      “I’d rather have good health and imagination,” he answered.

      Then she played and sang to him, while he gazed with hungry yearning at her.

      Chapter 10

      He stopped to dinner that evening, and, much to Ruth’s satisfaction, made a favorable impression on her father. They talked about the sea as a career, and Mr. Morse remarked afterward that he seemed a very clear-headed young man. Martin talked slowly, which enabled him to find the best thoughts that were in him. His shyness and modesty even commended him to Mrs. Morse.

      “He is the first man that ever drew notice from Ruth,” she told her husband.

      Mr. Morse looked at his wife curiously.

      “You mean to use this young sailor to wake her up?” he questioned.

      “I mean that she is not to die an old maid if I can help it,” was the answer. “If this young Eden can arouse her interest in mankind in general, it will be a good thing.”

      “A very good thing,” he commented. “But suppose, – and we must suppose, sometimes, my dear, – suppose he arouses her interest too particularly in him?”

      “Impossible,” Mrs. Morse laughed. “She is three years older than he, and, besides, it is impossible. Trust that to me.”

      Sunday Martin had intended to devote to studying for the high school examination. But some days after he learned that he had failed in everything save grammar.

      “Your grammar is excellent,” Professor Hilton informed him, staring at him through heavy spectacles; “but you know nothing, positively nothing, in the other branches, and your United States history is abominable – there is no other word for it, abominable.”

      “Yes, sir,” Martin said humbly.

      “And I can advise you to go back to the grammar school for at least two years. Good day.”

      “You see I was right,” said Ruth. “It is because you need the discipline of study. Professor Hilton is right, and if I were you, I’d go to night school.”

      But if my days are taken up with work and my nights with school, when am I going to see you? – was Martin’s first thought. He said:

      “It seems so babyish for me to go to night school. I can do the work quicker than they can teach me. It will be a loss of time – ” he thought of her – “and I can’t afford the time. I have no time to spare, in fact.”

      She looked at him gently. “Physics and chemistry – you can’t do them without laboratory study; and you’ll find algebra and geometry almost hopeless with instruction. You need the skilled teachers, the specialists.”

      Chapter 11

      Martin went back to his pearl-diving article. After that he wrote an article on the sea as a career, and another on turtle-catching. Then he tried, as an experiment, a short story, and he had finished six short stories and sent them to various magazines. He wrote, intensely, from morning till night, and late at night, except when he went to the reading-room, draw books from the library, or saw Ruth. He was profoundly happy. The joy of creation was his. All the life about him – the odors of stale vegetables and soapsuds, his sad sister, and the jeering face of Mr. Higginbotham – was a dream. The real world was in his mind, and the stories he wrote were reality.

      The

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