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In conjunction with a perfect stomach that could digest anything,
he possessed knowledge of the various foods that were at the same
time nutritious and cheap. Pea-soup was a common article in his
diet, as well as potatoes and beans, the latter large and brown and
cooked in Mexican style. Rice, cooked as American housewives never
cook it and can never learn to cook it, appeared on Martin's table
at least once a day. Dried fruits were less expensive than fresh,
and he had usually a pot of them, cooked and ready at hand, for
they took the place of butter on his bread. Occasionally he graced
his table with a piece of round-steak, or with a soup-bone.
Coffee, without cream or milk, he had twice a day, in the evening
substituting tea; but both coffee and tea were excellently cooked.
Martin Eden
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129
There was need for him to be economical. His vacation had consumed
nearly all he had earned in the laundry, and he was so far from his
market that weeks must elapse before he could hope for the first
returns from his hack-work. Except at such times as he saw Ruth,
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or dropped in to see his sister Gertude, he lived a recluse, in
each day accomplishing at least three days' labor of ordinary men.
He slept a scant five hours, and only one with a constitution of
iron could have held himself down, as Martin did, day after day, to
nineteen consecutive hours of toil. He never lost a moment. On
the looking-glass were lists of definitions and pronunciations;
when shaving, or dressing, or combing his hair, he conned these
lists over. Similar lists were on the wall over the oil-stove, and
they were similarly conned while he was engaged in cooking or in
washing the dishes. New lists continually displaced the old ones.
Every strange or partly familiar word encountered in his reading
was immediately jotted down, and later, when a sufficient number
had been accumulated, were typed and pinned to the wall or looking-
glass. He even carried them in his pockets, and reviewed them at
odd moments on the street, or while waiting in butcher shop or
grocery to be served.
He went farther in the matter. Reading the works of men who had
arrived, he noted every result achieved by them, and worked out the
tricks by which they had been achieved - the tricks of narrative,
of exposition, of style, the points of view, the contrasts, the
epigrams; and of all these he made lists for study. He did not
ape. He sought principles. He drew up lists of effective and
fetching mannerisms, till out of many such, culled from many
writers, he was able to induce the general principle of mannerism,
and, thus equipped, to cast about for new and original ones of his
own, and to weigh and measure and appraise them properly. In
similar manner he collected lists of strong phrases, the phrases of
living language, phrases that bit like acid and scorched like
flame, or that glowed and were mellow and luscious in the midst of
the arid desert of common speech. He sought always for the
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principle that lay behind and beneath. He wanted to know how the
thing was done; after that he could do it for himself. He was not
content with the fair face of beauty. He dissected beauty in his
crowded little bedroom laboratory, where cooking smells alternated
with the outer bedlam of the Silva tribe; and, having dissected and
learned the anatomy of beauty, he was nearer being able to create
beauty itself.
He was so made that he could work only with understanding. He
could not work blindly, in the dark, ignorant of what he was
producing and trusting to chance and the star of his genius that
the effect produced should be right and fine. He had no patience
with chance effects. He wanted to know why and how. His was
deliberate creative genius, and, before he began a story or poem,
the thing itself was already alive in his brain, with the end in
sight and the means of realizing that end in his conscious
possession. Otherwise the effort was doomed to failure. On the
other hand, he appreciated the chance effects in words and phrases
that came lightly and easily into his brain, and that later stood
all tests of beauty and power and developed tremendous and
incommunicable connotations. Before such he bowed down and
Martin Eden
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marvelled, knowing that they were beyond the deliberate creation of
any man. And no matter how much he dissected beauty in search of
the principles that underlie beauty and make beauty possible, he
was aware, always, of the innermost mystery of beauty to which he
did not penetrate and to which no man had ever penetrated. He knew
full well, from his Spencer, that man can never attain ultimate
knowledge of anything, and that the mystery of beauty was no less
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than that of life - nay, more that the fibres of beauty and life
were intertwisted, and that he himself was but a bit of the same
nonunderstandable fabric, twisted of sunshine and star-dust and
wonder.
In fact, it was when filled with these thoughts that he wrote his
essay entitled "Star-dust," in which he had his fling, not at the
principles of criticism, but at the principal critics. It was
brilliant, deep, philosophical, and deliciously touched with
laughter. Also it was promptly rejected by the magazines as often
as it was submitted. But having cleared his mind of it, he went
serenely on his way. It was a habit he developed, of incubating
and maturing his thought upon a subject, and of then rushing into
the type-writer with it. That it did not see print was a matter a
small moment with him. The writing of it was the culminating act
of a long mental process, the drawing together of scattered threads
of thought and the final generalizing upon all the data with which
his mind was burdened. To write such an article was the conscious
effort by which he freed his mind and made it ready for fresh
material and problems. It was in a way akin to that common habit
of men and women troubled by real or fancied grievances, who
periodically and volubly break their long-suffering silence and
"have their say" till the last word is said.
CHAPTER XXIV
The weeks passed. Martin ran out of money, and publishers' checks
were far away as ever. All his important manuscripts had come back
and been started out again, and his hack-work fared no better. His
little kitchen was no longer graced with a variety of foods.
Caught in the pinch with a part sack of rice and a few pounds of
dried apricots, rice and apricots was his menu three times a day
for five days hand-running. Then he startled to realize on his
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credit. The Portuguese grocer, to whom he had hitherto paid cash,
called a halt when Martin's bill reached the magnificent total of
three dollars and eighty-five cents.
"For you see," said the grocer, "you no catcha da work, I losa da
mon'."
And Martin could reply nothing. There was no way of explaining.
It was not true business principle to allow credit to a strong-
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