e waist, with
naked fists, fighting his great fight with Liverpool Red in the
forecastle of the Susquehanna; and he saw the bloody deck of the John
Rogers, that gray morning of attempted mutiny, the mate kicking in death-
throes on the main-hatch, the revolver in the old man's hand spitting
fire and smoke, the men with passion-wrenched faces, of brutes screaming
vile blasphemies and falling about him--and then he returned to the
central scene, calm and clean in the steadfast light, where Ruth sat and
talked with him amid books and paintings; and he saw the grand piano upon
which she would later play to him; and he heard the echoes of his own
selected and correct words, "But then, may I not be peculiarly
constituted to write?"

"But no matter how peculiarly constituted a man may be for
blacksmithing," she was laughing, "I never heard of one becoming a
blacksmith without first serving his apprenticeship."

"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 thorough education," was the answer, "whether or not you
ultimately become a writer. This education is indispensable for whatever
career you select, and it must not be slipshod or sketchy. You should go
to high school."

"Yes--" he began; but she interrupted with an afterthought:-

"Of course, you could go on with your writing, too."

"I would have to," he said grimly.

"Why?" She looked at him, prettily puzzled, for she did not quite like
the persistence with which he clung to his notion.

"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'd rather have good health and imagination," he answered. "I can make
good on the income, but the other things have to be made good for--" He
almost said "you," then amended his sentence to, "have to be made good
for one."

"Don't say 'make good,'" she cried, sweetly petulant. "It's slang, and
it's horrid."

He flushed, and stammered, "That's right, and I only wish you'd correct
me every time."

"I--I'd like to," she said haltingly. "You have so much in you that is
good that I want to see you perfect."

He was clay in her hands immediately, as passionately desirous of being
moulded by her as she was desirous of shaping him into the image of her
ideal of man.