Chapter XXIX - Page 2

cases the titles had been altered: "Finis," for instance,
being changed to "The Finish," and "The Song of the Outer Reef" to
"The Song of the Coral Reef." In one case, an absolutely different
title, a misappropriate title, was substituted. In place of his
own, "Medusa Lights," the editor had printed, "The Backward Track."
But the slaughter in the body of the poems was terrifying. Martin
groaned and sweated and thrust his hands through his hair.
Phrases, lines, and stanzas were cut out, interchanged, or juggled
about in the most incomprehensible manner. Sometimes lines and
stanzas not his own were substituted for his. He could not believe
that a sane editor could be guilty of such maltreatment, and his
favorite hypothesis was that his poems must have been doctored by
the office boy or the stenographer. Martin wrote immediately,
begging the editor to cease publishing the lyrics and to return
them to him.

He wrote again and again, begging, entreating, threatening, but his
letters were ignored. Month by month the slaughter went on till
the thirty poems were published, and month by month he received a
check for those which had appeared in the current number.

Despite these various misadventures, the memory of the WHITE MOUSE
forty-dollar check sustained him, though he was driven more and
more to hack-work. He discovered a bread-and-butter field in the
agricultural weeklies and trade journals, though among the
religious weeklies he found he could easily starve. At his lowest
ebb, when his black suit was in pawn, he made a ten-strike - or so
it seemed to him - in a prize contest arranged by the County
Committee of the Republican Party. There were three branches of
the contest, and he entered them all, laughing at himself bitterly
the while in that he was driven to such straits to live. His poem
won the first prize of ten dollars, his campaign song the second
prize of five dollars, his essay on the principles of the
Republican Party the first prize of twenty-five dollars. Which was
very gratifying to him until he tried to collect. Something had
gone wrong in the County Committee, and, though a rich banker and a
state senator were members of it, the money was not forthcoming.
While this affair was hanging fire, he proved that he understood
the principles of the Democratic Party by winning the first prize
for his essay in a similar contest. And, moreover, he received the
money, twenty-five dollars. But the forty dollars won in the first
contest he never received.

Driven to shifts in order to see Ruth, and deciding that the long
walk from north Oakland to her house and back again consumed too
much time, he kept his black suit in pawn in place of his bicycle.
The latter gave him exercise,