Chapter XIV

CHAPTER XIV

It was not because of Olney, but in spite of Ruth, and his love for
Ruth, that he finally decided not to take up Latin. His money
meant time. There was so much that was more important than Latin,
so many studies that clamored with imperious voices. And he must
write. He must earn money. He had had no acceptances. Twoscore
of manuscripts were travelling the endless round of the magazines.
How did the others do it? He spent long hours in the free reading-
room, going over what others had written, studying their work
eagerly and critically, comparing it with his own, and wondering,
wondering, about the secret trick they had discovered which enabled
them to sell their work.

He was amazed at the immense amount of printed stuff that was dead.
No light, no life, no color, was shot through it. There was no
breath of life in it, and yet it sold, at two cents a word, twenty
dollars a thousand - the newspaper clipping had said so. He was
puzzled by countless short stories, written lightly and cleverly he
confessed, but without vitality or reality. Life was so strange
and wonderful, filled with an immensity of problems, of dreams, and
of heroic toils, and yet these stories dealt only with the
commonplaces of life. He felt the stress and strain of life, its
fevers and sweats and wild insurgences - surely this was the stuff
to write about! He wanted to glorify the leaders of forlorn hopes,
the mad lovers, the giants that fought under stress and strain,
amid terror and tragedy, making life crackle with the strength of
their endeavor. And yet the magazine short stories seemed intent
on glorifying the Mr. Butlers, the sordid dollar-chasers, and the
commonplace little love affairs of commonplace little men and
women. Was it because the editors of the magazines were
commonplace? he demanded. Or were they afraid of life, these
writers and editors and readers?

But his chief trouble was that he did not know any editors or
writers. And not merely did he not know any writers, but he did
not know anybody who had ever attempted to write. There was nobody
to tell him, to hint to him, to give him the least word of advice.
He began to doubt that editors were real men. They seemed cogs in
a machine. That was what it was, a machine. He poured his soul
into stories, articles, and poems, and intrusted them to the
machine. He folded them just so, put the proper stamps inside the
long envelope along with the manuscript, sealed the envelope, put
more stamps outside, and dropped it into the mail-box. It
travelled across the continent, and after a certain lapse of time
the postman returned him the manuscript in another long envelope,
on the outside of which were the stamps he had enclosed. There was