Chapter XXVII - Page 2

views on the
whole general subject.

But "Adventure," and all that he deemed his best work, still went
begging among the editors. His early work counted for nothing in
his eyes except for the money it brought, and his horror stories,
two of which he had sold, he did not consider high work nor his
best work. To him they were frankly imaginative and fantastic,
though invested with all the glamour of the real, wherein lay their
power. This investiture of the grotesque and impossible with
reality, he looked upon as a trick - a skilful trick at best.
Great literature could not reside in such a field. Their artistry
was high, but he denied the worthwhileness of artistry when
divorced from humanness. The trick had been to fling over the face
of his artistry a mask of humanness, and this he had done in the
half-dozen or so stories of the horror brand he had written before
he emerged upon the high peaks of "Adventure," "Joy," "The Pot,"
and "The Wine of Life."

The three dollars he received for the triolets he used to eke out a
precarious existence against the arrival of the WHITE MOUSE check.
He cashed the first check with the suspicious Portuguese grocer,
paying a dollar on account and dividing the remaining two dollars
between the baker and the fruit store. Martin was not yet rich
enough to afford meat, and he was on slim allowance when the WHITE
MOUSE check arrived. He was divided on the cashing of it. He had
never been in a bank in his life, much less been in one on
business, and he had a naive and childlike desire to walk into one
of the big banks down in Oakland and fling down his indorsed check
for forty dollars. On the other hand, practical common sense ruled
that he should cash it with his grocer and thereby make an
impression that would later result in an increase of credit.
Reluctantly Martin yielded to the claims of the grocer, paying his
bill with him in full, and receiving in change a pocketful of
jingling coin. Also, he paid the other tradesmen in full, redeemed
his suit and his bicycle, paid one month's rent on the type-writer,
and paid Maria the overdue month for his room and a month in
advance. This left him in his pocket, for emergencies, a balance
of nearly three dollars.

In itself, this small sum seemed a fortune. Immediately on
recovering his clothes he had gone to see Ruth, and on the way he
could not refrain from jingling the little handful of silver in his
pocket. He had been so long without money that, like a rescued
starving man who cannot let the unconsumed food out of his sight,
Martin could not keep his hand off the silver. He was not mean,
nor avaricious, but the money meant more than so many dollars and
cents. It stood for success, and the eagles