he wrote an article on the sea as a career,
another on turtle-catching, and a third on the northeast trades. Then he
tried, as an experiment, a short story, and before he broke his stride he
had finished six short stories and despatched them to various magazines.
He wrote prolifically, intensely, from morning till night, and late at
night, except when he broke off to go to the reading-room, draw books
from the library, or to call on Ruth. He was profoundly happy. Life was
pitched high. He was in a fever that never broke. The joy of creation
that is supposed to belong to the gods was his. All the life about
him--the odors of stale vegetables and soapsuds, the slatternly form of
his sister, and the jeering face of Mr. Higginbotham--was a dream. The
real world was in his mind, and the stories he wrote were so many pieces
of reality out of his mind.

The days were too short. There was so much he wanted to study. He cut
his sleep down to five hours and found that he could get along upon it.
He tried four hours and a half, and regretfully came back to five. He
could joyfully have spent all his waking hours upon any one of his
pursuits. It was with regret that he ceased from writing to study, that
he ceased from study to go to the library, that he tore himself away from
that chart-room of knowledge or from the magazines in the reading-room
that were filled with the secrets of writers who succeeded in selling
their wares. It was like severing heart strings, when he was with Ruth,
to stand up and go; and he scorched through the dark streets so as to get
home to his books at the least possible expense of time. And hardest of
all was it to shut up the algebra or physics, put note-book and pencil
aside, and close his tired eyes in sleep. He hated the thought of
ceasing to live, even for so short a time, and his sole consolation was
that the alarm clock was set five hours ahead. He would lose only five
hours anyway, and then the jangling bell would jerk him out of
unconsciousness and he would have before him another glorious day of
nineteen hours.

In the meantime the weeks were passing, his money was ebbing low, and
there was no money coming in. A month after he had mailed it, the
adventure serial for boys was returned to him by The Youth's Companion.
The rejection slip was so tactfully worded that he felt kindly toward the
editor. But he did not feel so kindly toward the editor of the San
Francisco Examiner. Aft