ghts went ever around and around in
a circle. The centre of that circle was "work performed"; it ate at his
brain like a deathless maggot. He awoke to it in the morning. It
tormented his dreams at night. Every affair of life around him that
penetrated through his senses immediately related itself to "work
performed." He drove along the path of relentless logic to the
conclusion that he was nobody, nothing. Mart Eden, the hoodlum, and Mart
Eden, the sailor, had been real, had been he; but Martin Eden! the famous
writer, did not exist. Martin Eden, the famous writer, was a vapor that
had arisen in the mob-mind and by the mob-mind had been thrust into the
corporeal being of Mart Eden, the hoodlum and sailor. But it couldn't
fool him. He was not that sun-myth that the mob was worshipping and
sacrificing dinners to. He knew better.

He read the magazines about himself, and pored over portraits of himself
published therein until he was unable to associate his identity with
those portraits. He was the fellow who had lived and thrilled and loved;
who had been easy-going and tolerant of the frailties of life; who had
served in the forecastle, wandered in strange lands, and led his gang in
the old fighting days. He was the fellow who had been stunned at first
by the thousands of books in the free library, and who had afterward
learned his way among them and mastered them; he was the fellow who had
burned the midnight oil and bedded with a spur and written books himself.
But the one thing he was not was that colossal appetite that all the mob
was bent upon feeding.

There were things, however, in the magazines that amused him. All the
magazines were claiming him. Warren's Monthly advertised to its
subscribers that it was always on the quest after new writers, and that,
among others, it had introduced Martin Eden to the reading public. The
White Mouse claimed him; so did The Northern Review and Mackintosh's
Magazine, until silenced by The Globe, which pointed triumphantly to its
files where the mangled "Sea Lyrics" lay buried. Youth and Age, which
had come to life again after having escaped paying its bills, put in a
prior claim, which nobody but farmers' children ever read. The
Transcontinental made a dignified and convincing statement of how it
first discovered Martin Eden, which was warmly disputed by The Hornet,
with the exhibit of "The Peri and the Pearl." The modest claim of
Singletree, Darnley & Co. was lo