e world. At this time I made my living as a newsboy, selling papers
in the streets; and from then on until I was sixteen I had a thousand and
one different occupations--work and school, school and work--and so it
ran.

Then the adventure-lust was strong within me, and I left home. I didn't
run, I just left--went out in the bay, and joined the oyster pirates. The
days of the oyster pirates are now past, and if I had got my dues for
piracy, I would have been given five hundred years in prison. Later, I
shipped as a sailor on a schooner, and also took a turn at salmon
fishing. Oddly enough, my next occupation was on a fish-patrol, where I
was entrusted with the arrest of any violators of the fishing laws.
Numbers of lawless Chinese, Greeks, and Italians were at that time
engaged in illegal fishing, and many a patrolman paid his life for his
interference. My only weapon on duty was a steel table-fork, but I felt
fearless and a man when I climbed over the side of a boat to arrest some
marauder.

Subsequently I shipped before the mast and sailed for the Japanese coast
on a seal-hunting expedition, later going to Behring Sea. After sealing
for seven months I came back to California and took odd jobs at coal
shovelling and longshoring and also in a jute factory, where I worked
from six in the morning until seven at night. I had planned to join the
same lot for another sealing trip the following year, but somehow I
missed them. They sailed away on the _Mary Thomas_, which was lost with
all hands.

In my fitful school-days I had written the usual compositions, which had
been praised in the usual way, and while working in the jute mills I
still made an occasional try. The factory occupied thirteen hours of my
day, and being young and husky, I wanted a little time for myself, so
there was little left for composition. The San Francisco _Call_ offered
a prize for a descriptive article. My mother urged me to try for it, and
I did, taking for my subject "Typhoon off the Coast of Japan." Very
tired and sleepy, knowing I had to be up at half-past five, I began the
article at midnight and worked straight on until I had written two
thousand words, the limit of the article, but with my idea only half
worked out. The next night, under the same conditions, I continued,
adding another two thousand words before I finished, and then the third
night I spent in cutting out the excess, so as to bring the article
within the conditio