r collection of love-poems. We were
greatly impressed by them at the time, but certain arrangements already
entered into prevented our taking them. If you still have them, and if
you will be kind enough to forward them, we shall be glad to publish the
entire collection on your own terms. We are also prepared to make a most
advantageous offer for bringing them out in book-form."

Martin recollected his blank-verse tragedy, and sent it instead. He read
it over before mailing, and was particularly impressed by its sophomoric
amateurishness and general worthlessness. But he sent it; and it was
published, to the everlasting regret of the editor. The public was
indignant and incredulous. It was too far a cry from Martin Eden's high
standard to that serious bosh. It was asserted that he had never written
it, that the magazine had faked it very clumsily, or that Martin Eden was
emulating the elder Dumas and at the height of success was hiring his
writing done for him. But when he explained that the tragedy was an
early effort of his literary childhood, and that the magazine had refused
to be happy unless it got it, a great laugh went up at the magazine's
expense and a change in the editorship followed. The tragedy was never
brought out in book-form, though Martin pocketed the advance royalties
that had been paid.

Coleman's Weekly sent Martin a lengthy telegram, costing nearly three
hundred dollars, offering him a thousand dollars an article for twenty
articles. He was to travel over the United States, with all expenses
paid, and select whatever topics interested him. The body of the
telegram was devoted to hypothetical topics in order to show him the
freedom of range that was to be his. The only restriction placed upon
him was that he must confine himself to the United States. Martin sent
his inability to accept and his regrets by wire "collect."

"Wiki-Wiki," published in Warren's Monthly, was an instantaneous success.
It was brought out forward in a wide-margined, beautifully decorated
volume that struck the holiday trade and sold like wildfire. The critics
were unanimous in the belief that it would take its place with those two
classics by two great writers, "The Bottle Imp" and "The Magic Skin."

The public, however, received the "Smoke of Joy" collection rather
dubiously and coldly. The audacity and unconventionality of the
storiettes was a shock to bourgeois morality and prejudice; but when
Paris went