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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
In one case, an absolutely different
title, a misappropriate title, was substituted. In place of his own,
"Medusa Lights," the editor had printed, "The Backward Track." But the
slaughter in the body of the poems was terrifying. Martin groaned and
sweated and thrust his hands through his hair. Phrases, lines, and
stanzas were cut out, interchanged, or juggled about in the most
incomprehensible manner. Sometimes lines and stanzas not his own were
substituted for his. He could not believe that a sane editor could be
guilty of such maltreatment, and his favorite hypothesis was that his
poems must have been doctored by the office boy or the stenographer.
Martin wrote immediately, begging the editor to cease publishing the
lyrics and to return them to him.
He wrote again and again, begging, entreating, threatening, but his
letters were ignored. Month by month the slaughter went on till the
thirty poems were published, and month by month he received a check for
those which had appeared in the current number.
Despite these various misadventures, the memory of the White Mouse forty-
dollar check sustained him, though he was driven more and more to hack-
work. He discovered a bread-and-butter field in the agricultural
weeklies and trade journals, though among the religious weeklies he found
he could easily starve. At his lowest ebb, when his black suit was in
pawn, he made a ten-strike--or so it seemed to him--in a prize contest
arranged by the County Committee of the Republican Party. There were
three branches of the contest, and he entered them all, laughing at
himself bitterly the while in that he was driven to such straits to live.
His poem won the first prize of ten dollars, his campaign song the second
prize of five dollars, his essay on the principles of the Republican
Party the first prize of twenty-five dollars. Which was very gratifying
to him until he tried to collect. Something had gone wrong in the County
Committee, and, though a rich banker and a state senator were members of
it, the money was not forthcoming. While this affair was hanging fire,
he proved that he understood the principles of the Democratic Party by
winning the first prize for his essay in a similar contest. And,
moreover, he received the money, twenty-five dollars. But the forty
dollars won in the first contest he never received.
Driven to shifts in order to see Ruth, and deciding that the long walk
from north Oakland to her house and back again consumed too much time, he
kept his black suit in pawn in place of his bicycle. The latter gave him
exercise, saved him hours of time for work, and enabled him to see Ruth
just the same. A pair of knee duck trousers and an old sweater made him
a presentable wheel costume, so that he could go with Ruth on afternoon
rides. Besides, he no longer had opportunity to see much of her in her
own home, where Mrs. Morse was thoroughly prosecuting her campaign of
entertainment. The exalted beings he met there, and to whom he had
looked up but a short time before, now bored him. They were no longer
exalted. He was nervous and irritable, what of his hard times,
disappointments, and close application to work, and the conversation of
such people was maddening. He was not unduly egotistic. He measured the
narrowness of their minds by the minds of the thinkers in the books he
read. At Ruths home he never met a large mind, with the exception of
Professor Caldwell, and Caldwell he had met there only once. As for the
rest, they were numskulls, ninnies, superficial, dogmatic, and ignorant.
It was their ignorance that astounded him. What was the matter with
them? What had they done with their educations? They had had access to
the same books he had. How did it happen that they had drawn nothing
from them?
He knew that the great minds, the deep and rational thinkers, existed. He
had his proofs from the books, the books that had educated him beyond the
Morse standard. And he knew that higher intellects than those of the
Morse circle were to be found in the world. He read English society
novels, wherein he caught glimpses of men and women talking politics and
philosophy. And he read of salons in great Martin Eden page 118 Martin Eden page 120 |