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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
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
hadnt 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 Youths Companion.
He went to the free reading-room and looked through the files of The
Youths 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-laws 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 oclock. This was his Martin Eden page 37 Martin Eden page 39 |