Chapter VI - Page 2

was her room - he had learned that;
and thereafter he strayed there often, hiding under a dark tree on
the opposite side of the street and smoking countless cigarettes.
One afternoon he saw her mother coming out of a bank, and received
another proof of the enormous distance that separated Ruth from
him. She was of the class that dealt with banks. He had never
been inside a bank in his life, and he had an idea that such
institutions were frequented only by the very rich and the very
powerful.

In one way, he had undergone a moral revolution. Her cleanness and
purity had reacted upon him, and he felt in his being a crying need
to be clean. He must be that if he were ever to be worthy of
breathing the same air with her. He washed his teeth, and scrubbed
his hands with a kitchen scrub-brush till he saw a nail-brush in a
drug-store window and divined its use. While purchasing it, the
clerk glanced at his nails, suggested a nail-file, and so he became
possessed of an additional toilet-tool. He ran across a book in
the library on the care of the body, and promptly developed a
penchant for a cold-water bath every morning, much to the amazement
of Jim, and to the bewilderment of Mr. Higginbotham, who was not in
sympathy with such high-fangled notions and who seriously debated
whether or not he should charge Martin extra for the water.
Another stride was in the direction of creased trousers. Now that
Martin was aroused in such matters, he swiftly noted the difference
between the baggy knees of the trousers worn by the working class
and the straight line from knee to foot of those worn by the men
above the working class. Also, he learned the reason why, and
invaded his sister's kitchen in search of irons and ironing-board.
He had misadventures at first, hopelessly burning one pair and
buying another, which expenditure again brought nearer the day on
which he must put to sea.

But the reform went deeper than mere outward appearance. He still
smoked, but he drank no more. Up to that time, drinking had seemed
to him the proper thing for men to do, and he had prided himself on
his strong head which enabled him to drink most men under the
table. Whenever he encountered a chance shipmate, and there were
many in San Francisco, he treated them and was treated in turn, as
of old, but he ordered for himself root beer or ginger ale and
good-naturedly endured their chaffing. And as they waxed maudlin
he studied them, watching the beast rise and master them and
thanking God that he was no longer as they. They had their
limitations to forget, and when they were drunk, their dim, stupid
spirits were even as gods, and each ruled in his heaven of
intoxicated desire. With Martin the need for strong drink had