To write! This thought was fire in him.
So he entered his old room at Bernard Higginbotham’s and set to work. He did not tell Ruth that he was back. He did not know how long an article he would write, but he counted the words in a article in the SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER.[51] His writing lasted for three days. Also, he learned that first-class papers paid a minimum of ten dollars a column. So one hundred dollars! and he decided that that was better than seafaring.[52]
He mailed the manuscript in a big envelope, and addressed it to the editor of the SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER. He had an idea that everything sent to a newspaper was published immediately. Then he decided to write an adventure story for boys and sell it to THE YOUTH’S COMPANION.[53]
He wanted to write about the things he knew. It was easy work, he decided on Saturday evening. He had completed on that day the first instalment of three thousand words.
* * *
After breakfast he went on with his story. He often read or re-read a chapter. This was his programme for a week. Each day he did three thousand words, and each evening he studies stories, articles, and poems that editors saw fit to publish.[54] One thing was certain: What these writers did he could do, and only give him time and he would do what they could not do. He was glad to read in BOOK NEWS[55] that Rudyard Kipling[56] received a dollar per word, and that the minimum rate paid by first-class magazines was two cents a word. THE YOUTH’S COMPANION was certainly first class, and at that rate the three thousand words he had written that day would bring him sixty dollars – two months’ wages on the sea![57]
On Friday night he finished the story, twenty-one thousand words long. At two cents a word, he calculated, that would bring him four hundred and twenty dollars. Not a bad week’s work. It was more money than he had ever possessed at one time.[58] He did not know how he could spend it all. He planned to buy some more clothes, to subscribe to many magazines, and to buy many useful books. And still there was a large portion of the four hundred and twenty dollars unspent. Finally, he decided to hire a servant for Gertrude and to buy a bicycle for Marion.[59]
He mailed the big manuscript to THE YOUTH’S COMPANION, and on Saturday afternoon he went to see Ruth. He had telephoned, and she went herself to greet him at the door. He flushed warmly as he took her hand and looked into her blue eyes. She noted his clothes. They really fitted him, – it was his first made-to-order suit.[60] Ruth did not remember when she had felt so happy. This change in him was her handiwork, and she was proud of it.
But the most radical change of all, and the one that pleased her most, was the change in his speech. Not only did he speak more correctly, but he spoke more easily, and there were many new words in his vocabulary. He displayed a lightness and facetiousness of thought that delighted her.
He told her of what he had been doing, and of his plan to write for a livelihood and to go on with his studies. But she did not think much of his plan.
“You see,” she said frankly, “writing must be a trade, like anything else. You can’t become a blacksmith without spending three – or five! – years at learning the trade.”
“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.”
