Martin Eden

termination died away. He did not know the proper time to call, nor was there any one to tell him, and he was afraid of committing himself to an irretrievable blunder. Having shaken himself free fr

ain fallow all his life so far as the abstract thought of the books was concerned, and it was ripe for the sowing. I

e. He was bewildered, and yet he wanted to know. He had become interested, in a day, in economics, industry, and politics. Passing through the City Hall Park, he had noticed a group of men, in the centre of which were half a dozen, with flushed faces and raised voices, earnestly carrying on a discussion. He joined the listeners, and heard a new, alien tongue in the mouths of the philosophers of the people. One was a tramp, another was a labor agitator, a third was a law-school student, and the remainder was composed of wordy workingmen. For the first time he heard of socialism, anarchism, and single tax, and learned t

e dictionary was in front of him more often than the book. He looked up so many new words that when they recurred, he had forgotten their meaning and had to look them up again. He devised the plan of writing the definitions in a note-book, and filled page after page with them. And still he could not understand. He read until three in the morning, and his brain was in a turmoil, but not one essential thought in the text had he grasped. He looked up, and it seemed that the room was lifting, heeling, and plunging

his mind for the heavier work that was to come. The pages of his mind were blank, and, without effort, much he read and liked, stanza by stanza, was impressed upon those pages, so that he was soon able to extract great joy from chanting aloud or under his breath the musi

ys greeting him with a smile and a nod when he entered. It was because of this that Martin did a daring

omething I'd li

led and pai

dy an' she asks you to ca

nd cling to his shoulders, wh

any time," th

"She-I-well, you see, it's this way: maybe sh

call a

n the other's mercy. "I'm just a rough sort of a fellow, an' I ain't never seen anything of society. This girl is all

Your request is not exactly in the scope of the reference

ked at him

off that way, I'd be

g par

easy that way, an' pol

e other, with

e afternoon?-not too close to meal

with a brightening face. "You call h

d, picking up his bo

d back a

ay, for instance, Miss Lizzie Smith-do

d authoritatively. "Say 'Miss Smith' al

Martin Eden sol

was Ruth's reply over the telephone to his stammered

to rush out of him and at her in waves of force. She felt the urge again of the desire to lean toward him for warmth, and marvelled again at the effect his presence produced upon her. And he, in turn, knew again the swimming sensation of bliss when he fel

of help to him. She had thought of this often since their first meeting. She wanted to help him. He made a call upon her pity and tenderness that no one had ever made before, and the pity was not so much derogatory of him as maternal in her. Her pity could not be of the common sort, when the man who drew it was so much man as to shock her with maidenly fears and set her mind and pulse thrilling with strange thoughts and feelings. The old fascina

been opened wide. She had given him understanding even more than Bulfinch and Gayley. There was a line that a week before he would not have favored with a second thought-"God's own mad lover dying on a kiss"; but now it was ever insistent in his mind. He marvelled at t

lips. He could kiss her lips, rest his own physical lips upon them, but it would be with the lofty and awful fervor with which one would kiss the robe of God. He was not conscious of this transvaluation of values that had taken place in him, and was unaware that the light that shone in his eyes when he looked at her was quite the same light that shines in all men's eyes when the desire of love is upon them. He did not dream how ardent and masculine his gaze was, nor that the warm flame of it was affecting the alchemy of her spirit. Her penetrative virginity exalted and disguised his own emotions, elevating his thoughts to a star-cool chastity, an

ow to help him, and she turned the conversation in that

better begin at the beginnin'. I ain't never had no advantages. I've worked pretty hard ever since I was a kid, an' since I've ben to the library, lookin' with new eyes at books-an' lookin' at new books, too-I've just about concluded that I ain't ben reading the right kind. You know the books you find in cattle-camps an' fo'c's'ls ain't the same you've got in this house, for instance. Well, th

the thing I'm after is I liked it. I wanted it. I want it now. I want to breathe air like you get in this house-air that is filled with books, and pictures, and beautiful things, where people talk in low voices an' are clean, an' their thoughts are clean. The air I always breathed was mixed up with grub an' house-rent an' scrappin' an b

to get it? Where do I take hold an' begin? I'm willin' to work my passage, you know, an' I can make most men sick when it comes to hard work. Once I get started, I'll work night an' day. Mebbe you thin

and its simplicity of thought with what she saw in his face. She had never looked in eyes that expressed greater power. Here was a man who could do anything, was the message she read there, and it accorded ill with the weakness of his spoken thought. And for that matter so complex and qui

ation. You should go back and finish grammar school,

es money," he

of that. But then you have relativ

ok his

ust knocked around over the world, lookin' out for number one. The oldest died in India. Two are in South Africa now, an' another's on a whaling voyage, an' one's travellin' with a circus-he does tr

grammar. Your grammar is-" She had intended saying "a

hed and

they're the only words I know-how to speak. I've got other words in my min

you say it. You don't mind my being f

r for her kindness. "Fire away. I've got to know

uld be, 'You were.' You say 'I seen' fo

ded; then added humbly, "You see, I do

helped nobody.' 'Never' is a negative. 'Nobody' is another negative. It is a rule that two negatives

helped somebody, does it? Seems to me that 'never helped nobody' just naturally fails to say w

nd surety of his mind. As soon as he had got the c

else I noticed in your speech. You say 'don't' when you shouldn't.

ment, then answ

aid, "And you use 'don't'

r this, and did no

illustration

n and decided that her expression was most adorable. "'It don't do to be hasty.' Change

er in his mind

r on your ear?

it does," he rep

, 'Can't say that i

r the other I can't make up my mind. I gues

d as 'ain't,'" she sa

flushed

nued; "'come' for 'came'; and the way you

ng that he ought to get down on his knees b

and sometimes you leave off the 'g.' And then you slur by dropping initial letters and diphthongs. 'T-h-e-m' spells 'them.' You pron

uette books, and he stood up awkwardly, worrying as to whether he was doing the

as she was leaving the room. "What is boo

ang. It means whiskey an' beer-an

when you are impersonal. 'You' is very personal, and y

just se

ey and beer-anything that will make yo

would, wou

nicer not to bring me into it. Substitute 'on

ation, and was fascinated by the glimpse he was catching into the tie-ribs of language. He leaned closer to the page, and her hair touched his cheek. He had fainted but once in his life, and he thought he was going to faint again. He could scarcely breathe, and his heart was pounding the blood up into his throat and suffocating him. Never had she seemed so accessible as now. For the moment the great gulf that separated them was bridged. But there wa