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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
he added proudly: "I wrote it in two days. Thats
fifty dollars a day."
He longed to read his stories to Ruth, but did not dare. He would wait
till some were published, he decided, then she would understand what he
had been working for. In the meantime he toiled on. Never had the
spirit of adventure lured him more strongly than on this amazing
exploration of the realm of mind. He bought the text-books on physics
and chemistry, and, along with his algebra, worked out problems and
demonstrations. He took the laboratory proofs on faith, and his intense
power of vision enabled him to see the reactions of chemicals more
understandingly than the average student saw them in the laboratory.
Martin wandered on through the heavy pages, overwhelmed by the clews he
was getting to the nature of things. He had accepted the world as the
world, but now he was comprehending the organization of it, the play and
interplay of force and matter. Spontaneous explanations of old matters
were continually arising in his mind. Levers and purchases fascinated
him, and his mind roved backward to hand-spikes and blocks and tackles at
sea. The theory of navigation, which enabled the ships to travel
unerringly their courses over the pathless ocean, was made clear to him.
The mysteries of storm, and rain, and tide were revealed, and the reason
for the existence of trade-winds made him wonder whether he had written
his article on the northeast trade too soon. At any rate he knew he
could write it better now. One afternoon he went out with Arthur to the
University of California, and, with bated breath and a feeling of
religious awe, went through the laboratories, saw demonstrations, and
listened to a physics professor lecturing to his classes.
But he did not neglect his writing. A stream of short stories flowed
from his pen, and he branched out into the easier forms of verse--the
kind he saw printed in the magazines--though he lost his head and wasted
two weeks on a tragedy in blank verse, the swift rejection of which, by
half a dozen magazines, dumfounded him. Then he discovered Henley and
wrote a series of sea-poems on the model of "Hospital Sketches." They
were simple poems, of light and color, and romance and adventure. "Sea
Lyrics," he called them, and he judged them to be the best work he had
yet done. There were thirty, and he completed them in a month, doing one
a day after having done his regular days work on fiction, which days
work was the equivalent to a weeks work of the average successful
writer. The toil meant nothing to him. It was not toil. He was finding
speech, and all the beauty and wonder that had been pent for years behind
his inarticulate lips was now pouring forth in a wild and virile flood.
He showed the "Sea Lyrics" to no one, not even to the editors. He had
become distrustful of editors. But it was not distrust that prevented
him from submitting the "Lyrics." They were so beautiful to him that he
was impelled to save them to share with Ruth in some glorious, far-off
time when he would dare to read to her what he had written. Against that
time he kept them with him, reading them aloud, going over them until he
knew them by heart.
He lived every moment of his waking hours, and he lived in his sleep, his
subjective mind rioting through his five hours of surcease and combining
the thoughts and events of the day into grotesque and impossible marvels.
In reality, he never rested, and a weaker body or a less firmly poised
brain would have been prostrated in a general break-down. His late
afternoon calls on Ruth were rarer now, for June was approaching, when
she would take her degree and finish with the university. Bachelor of
Arts!--when he thought of her degree, it seemed she fled beyond him
faster than he could pursue.
One afternoon a week she gave to him, and arriving late, he usually
stayed for dinner and for music afterward. Those were his red-letter
days. The atmosphere of the house, in such contrast with that in which
he lived, and the mere nearness to her, sent him forth each time with a
firmer grip on his resolve to climb the heights. Martin Eden page 45 Martin Eden page 47 |