"Dear sir:

What an encouragement your short note was! From the same I judge you can appreciate one s groping in the dark on strange trails. It's the first word of cheer I have received (a cheer, far more potent than publisher's checks).

"If a strong chin and a perhaps deceptive consciousness of growing strength, will aid in the fulfilment of your prophecy, it may to a certain extent be realized. Yes, my name is Jack London—rather an un-American heritage from a Yankee ancestry, dating beyond the French and Indian wars.

"Thanking you for your kindness, I am,

"Very truly yours,

"Jack London."

"It's hard to explain what I mean. Thus, for the Mexican—Statistics are not emotional, when stated in statistical manner. Don't say the Co. treated the men this way, or cheated them that way. Let the reader learn these facts through the minds of the men themselves, let the reader look at the question through their eyes. There are a variety of ways by which to do this—the most common would be to have them talk with each other. Let them carambo! and speak out the bitterness of their hearts, the injustice they suffer or think they suffer from the Co., the hatred they bear their bosses etc., etc."

"Your style occasionally reminds me of Bierce," or "a true stroke and a strong stroke." And I smile, in view of the clamor that often arose from frightened editorial staffs anent Jack London's offensive redbloodedness, to read his uncompromising advice: "I would not be so ghastly with that intestine; strike out 'and hung down'—(my taste only, yet I appreciate such things for I have seen much of them)."

It will be noticed that Jack had not yet conquered his own over-niceness, for the word "intestine" is used, whereas not so long thereafter he would have employed the shorter and more commanding "guts," in grim defiance of horrified friends and public—who nevertheless continued to read and extoll him.

"Thanks for tip to Western Press; I have some of my earlier, immature work with them now. Suppose I'll some day call my present work just as immature. . . .

"Will take advantage of tip to Vanity Fair.  . . . As to photo of myself. You shall be one of a number of friends who wait and wait in vain for a likeness of yours truly. My last posed foto was taken in sailor costume with a Joro girl in Yokohama. Have but one. But I'll do this: tell you all about me. 23 years of

age last January. Stand five foot seven or eight in stocking feet—sailor life shortened me. [He measured five feet nine inches at full stature.] At present time weight 168 Ibs.; but readily jump same pretty close to 180 when I take up outdoor life and go to roughing it. Am clean shaven—when I let 'em come, blonde mustache and black whiskers—but they don't come long. Clean face makes my age enigmatical, and equally competent judges variously estimate my age from twenty to thirty. Greenish-gray eyes, heavy brows which meet; brown hair, which, by the way, was black when I was born. . . . Face bronzed through many long-continued liaisons with the sun, though just now, owing to bleaching process of sedentary life, it is positively yellow. Several scars—hiatus of eight front upper teeth, usually disguised with false plate. There I am in toto.

"Tell me what you think of inclosed verse—get your mother's criticism too. Tender my thanks to your mother for her short note." [Mr. Johns' mother, Mrs. Jeania Peet, to whom Jack at intervals refers, is an exceptionally talented woman—writer, sculptress, and "artist of happiness" as Jack expressed it; mother of gifted sons, and once stepmother of our American poet Percy Mackaye.]

"Feb. 27, 1899.
"Dear sir:

". . . I cannot express the effect of hearing that what I have written has pleased others, for you know, of all people in the world, the author is the least competent to judge what he produces. . . . When I have finished a thing I cannot, as a rule, tell whether it is good or trash. . . .

"My life has been such a wandering one that there are great gaps in my reading and education, and I am so conscious of them that I am afraid of myself—besides, in the course of a sketch, I become saturated with the theme till at last it palls upon me.

"I appreciate, in a way, the high praise of being likened to Tourgenieff. Though aware of the high place he occupies in literature, we are as strangers. I think it was in Japan I read his 'House of Gentlefolk'; but that is the only book of his I have ever seen—I do not even know if the title is correct. There is so much good stuff to read and so little time to do it in. It sometimes makes

me sad to think of the many hours I have wasted over mediocre works, simply for want of better.

"I can only thank you for your kindness: it has put new life into me and at the same time placed a few landmarks on the uncharted path the beginner must travel. Would you tell me of the error you mentioned? The compositors made some bad mistakes, the worst being a wilful change in the title, and a most jarring one. It was plainly typewritten 'To the Man On Trail'; this they printed 'To the Man on the Trail.' What trail? The thing was abstract.

"Yours sincerely,"

"My dear sir:

How I appreciate your complaining of your friends when they say of your work, 'Splendid,' 'Excellent,' etc. That was my one great trouble. The farther I wandered from the beaten track (I mean the proper trend of modern style and literary art), the more encomiums were heaped upon me—by my friends. And believe me, the darkness I strayed into was heartbreaking. Surely, I have since thought, they must have seen where I was blind. So I grew to distrust them, and one day, between four and five months ago, awoke to the fact that I was all wrong. Everything crumbled away, and I started, from the beginning, to learn all over again. . . .

". . . I do join with you, and heartily, in admiration of Robert Louis Stevenson. What an example he was of application and self development! As a story-teller there isn't his equal; the same might almost be said of his essays. While the fascination of his other works is simply irresistible. To me, the most powerful of all is his 'Ebb Tide.' There is no comparison possible between him and that other wonderful countryman of his; there is no common norm by which we may judge them. And I see I do not share with you in my admiration of Kipling. He touches the soul of things. 'He draws the Thing as he sees it for the God of Things as they Are.' It were useless for me to mention all my favorites of his; let one example suffice. The Song of the Banjo, and just one line from it. Away in the wilderness where younger sons are striving for hearth and saddle of their own, the banjo is singing, reminding them of the world from which they are exiled:

"'Hear me babble what the maddest won't confess:
I am memory and torment; I am town;
I am all that ever went with evening dress.'

How often, a thousand miles beyond the bounds of civilization, thirsting for a woman's face, a daily paper, a good book, or better music,—sick for the charms of the old life—have I had that line recalled by the tumpy tum of a banjo, epitomizing the whole mood. . . .

"No; I appreciate how educating my roving has been. At the same time I am sorry that my years could not have been condensed in some magic way, so as to have introduced an equal amount of the scholar's life. That's the trouble of having one's nature dominated by conflicting impulses.

"0 yes: I have children constantly footing it to the silent sullen peoples who run the magazines! The Overland . . . 'The Son of the Wolf' was sent to them a week ago; they will have it out in the April number, if possible, illustrated by Dixon. I have seen some of his Indian work and think he s just the man for my types. . . .

"Speaking of the Black Cat: sometime since, they accepted a pseudo-scientific tale from me. I want to warn you, in case it comes out in the next year or so, that it was written several years ago—so you will forgive it. I hardly remember what it is like. The title is enough—'By a Thousand Deaths.'

"Another friend made the same criticism of 'sole speck of life.' I was saturated with my thought—on the relation of the soul to infinity, etc.—was dealing with the soul of Malemute Kid and did not at the time recognize the dogs. Such slips are liable, since, like you, I can't revise manuscript. My favorite method of composition is to write from fifty to three hundred words, then type it in the Ms. to be submitted. Whatever emendations are made, are put in in the course of typing or inserted with ink in the Ms. . . . Have at last learned to compose first, to the very conclusion, before touching pen to paper. I find I can thus do better work.

". . . And I warn you, I am as harsh on others as I expect them to be on me. This primrose dalliance among friends never leads anywhere. I once had a friend [this was Fred Jacobs]—

we went to college and did much of our studying together—with whom we could candidly discuss each other, holding back nothing. But he lies dead in Manila now. Yet once in a while even he got angry when I expressed my opinion too plainly.

". . . How are you off for humor? To save my life, while I can appreciate extremely well, I cannot develop a creative faculty for the same."

"Mar. 15, 1899.
"Dear sir:

". . . I agree with you that R. L. S. never turned out a foot of polished trash, and that Kipling has; but—well, Stevenson never had to worry about ways or means, while Kipling, a mere journalist, hurt himself by having to seek present sales rather than pothumous fame. . . . Kipling has his hand upon the 'fatted soul of things.'

". . . Speaking of humor—find enclosed triolets, the first, and also the last, I ever attempted. Perhaps there's no market for such things. Judge and Life refused them and I quit.

"So you have completed a novel? Lucky dog! How I envy you! I have only got from ten to twenty mapped out but God knows when I'11 ever get a chance to begin one, much less finish it. I have figured that it is easier to make one of from thirty-five to sixty thousand words and well written, then one three or four times as long and poorly written. What do you think about it?"

Mar. 30, 1899.
"My dear friend:

"Three or four months on the edge of the desert, all alone—how I envy you; and again, how I thank Heaven I am not in a similar position. What a glorious place it must be in which to write! That's one of the drawbacks of my present quarters. Everybody comes dropping in, and I haven't the heart to turn them away. Every once in a while, some old shipmate turns up. With but one exception, this is their story: just returned from a long voyage; what a wonderful fellow Jack London is; what a good comrade he always was; never liked anybody in all the world so much; have a barrel of curios aboard which will bring over in a couple of days for a present; big payday coming; expect to get paid off to-morrow—'Say, Jack old boy, can you lend us a couple of dollars till to-morrow? That's the way they always wind up.

And then I scale them down about half, give them the money and let them go. Some I never hear from again; others come back the third and fourth time.

"But I have the fatal gift of making friends without exertion. And they never forget me. Of course they are not of the above caliber; but I'd just as soon give them the money and let them go, as to have them eat up my time as they always do. Among my feminine friends I am known as 'only Jack' 'Nough said. Any trouble, tangles, etc., finds me called upon to straighten out. Since Saturday morning I have spent my whole time for one of them, and have accomplished what she and her friends failed to do in five years. This evening I shall finally have settled the whole thing to her satisfaction but look at the time I have lost. Of course, remuneration is out of the question; but it will have so endeared me to her, that she ll call again the next time she gets into a scrape. And so it goes—time—time—time. How precious the hours are!

"But I should not be unjust. The other afternoon I met an old friend on the car. Delighted to see me; must go back to the 'society' again. I finally promised to go down the following night; but lo, he had spread the news among other friends who had not seen me for two long years. I really did not think they or people in general ever had cared so much for me, and I was ready to weep with sheer happiness at the sincerity of their delight. . . . Could n't escape; the whole night was lost among them; supper had been ordered, other forgotten friends invited, etc.

"And to me, the strangest part is, that while considering myself blessed above all with the best of friends, I know that I have never done anything to deserve them or to hold them. Mind you, the crowd I have reference to in previous paragraph, has never received a favor of me, nor is bound to me by the slightest social, racial, or perhaps intellectual tie. And so it goes.

"But I have been isolated so much, that I can no longer bear to be torn away for long at a time from the city life. In this particular you will see my thankfulness at not filling your position. Yet you may keep in touch with the world with those trains ever passing.

"I suppose you see many of the genus hobo, do you not? I, too, was a tramp once.  . . . I remember, one night, leaving a swell

function in Michigan and crossing the lake to Chicago. There, the following morning found me hustling at back doors for a breakfast. That night I made over two hundred miles into Ohio before they finally put me off the train. I wonder what the young lady whom I took into supper would have thought, had she seen me anywhere from twelve to twenty-four hours after.

". . . How I chatter—all about self! . . . I cannot rewrite; but in turn, I write more slowly. I used to go at it like a hurricane, but found I failed to do myself justice.  . . . After sending criticism, and being reminded by the same of Bierce, I dug up 'Soldiers and Civilians.' I notice in his work the total absence of sympathy. They are wonderful in their way, yet owe nothing to grace of style; I might almost characterize them as having a metallic intellectual brilliancy. They appeal to the mind, but not to the heart. Yes; they appeal to the nerves, too; but you will notice in a psychological and not emotional manner. I am a great admirer of him, by the way, and never tire of his Sunday work in the Examiner.

". . . A strong will can accomplish anything—I believe you to be possessed of the same—why not form the habit of studying? There is no such thing as inspiration, and very little of genius. Dig, blooming under opportunity, results in what appears to be the former, and certainly makes possible the development of what original modicum of the latter one may possess. Dig is a wonderful thing, and will move more mountains than faith ever dreamed of. In fact, Dig should be the legitimate father of all self-faith.

" . . . And by the way, what do you think of Le Gallienne? As a writer I like him. . . . I know nothing about him as a man.  . . . In his version of the Rubaiyat, I was especially struck by the following, describing his search for the secret of life:

"'Up, up where Parrius hoofs stamp heaven's floor,
My soul went knocking at each starry door,
Till on the stilly top of heaven's stair,
Clear-eyed I looked—and laughed—and climbed no more.'

". . . My one great weakness is the study of human nature. Knowing no God, I have made of man my worship; and surely I have learned how vile he can be. But this only strengthens my

regard, because it enhances the mighty heights he can bring himself to tread. How small he is, and how great he is! But this weakness, this desire to come in touch with every strange soul I meet, has caused me many a scrape.

"I may go to Paris in 1900; but great things must occur first. I like the story you sent. No sentimental gush, no hysteria, but the innate pathos of it! . . . Our magazines are so goody-goody, that I wonder they would print a thing as risque and as good as that. This undue care to not bring the blush to the virgin cheek of the American young girl, is disgusting. And yet she is permitted to read the daily papers! Ever read Paul Bourget's comparison of the American and French young women?"

"I realize the truth in your criticism of ringing the changes on Malemute Kid. . . . But you will notice in 'The Son of the Wolf' that he appears only cursorily. In the June tale he will not appear at all, or even be mentioned. You surprise me with the aptness of your warning, telling me I may learn to love him too well myself. I am afraid I am rather stuck on him—not on the one in print, but the one in my brain. I doubt if I ever shall get him in print."

"April 17, 1899.
"My dear friend:—

"Am afraid you will suffer offense every time I write to you. I never wrote a letter yet without forcing myself to it, and I never completed one without sighing a great sigh of relief. As a correspondent I shall never shine. But O how dearly I love to read the letters which come to me from those who little know how I dislike answering. And I never would answer, did I not know they would also cease. . . .

". . . I see you are opposed to Jingoism. Yet I dare not express my views, for to so do myself adequate justice, would require at least one hundred thousand words. An evolutionist, believing in Natural Selection, half believing Maithus' 'Law of Population,' and a myriad other factors thrown in, I cannot but hail as unavoidable, the Black and the Brown going down before the

White. I see, after stating that I would not express my views, I have done the contrary. Will shut up at once.

" . . . Town Topics has accepted a two eight-line stanza humor ous fancy. Have you ever dealt with them? [This was "If I were God One Hour," published May 11, 1899.]

". . . But enemies—bah! . . . Lick a man, when it comes to a pinch, or be licked, but never hold a grudge. Settle it once and all, and forgive.

"All my life I have sought an ideal chum—such things as ideals are never attainable, anyway. I never found the man in whom the elements were so mixed that he could satisfy, or come any where near satisfying my ideal. A brilliant brain—good; and then the same united with physical cowardice—nit. And vice versa. So it goes and has gone. . . .

"It's a great thing, this coming to believe 'that the universe can continue to exist and operate in a satisfactory manner, without the perpetuation of one s own individuality.' I am an agnostic, with one exception: I do believe in the soul. But in the latter case, I can only see with death, the disintegration of the spirit's individuality, similar to that of the flesh. If people could come to realize the utter absurdity, logically, of the finite contemplating the infinite!

". . . Don't agree with you regarding your criticism of face torn away by bear. Had forgotten Kipling's 'Truce,' but anyway it does not matter. Many men are killed yearly, up there, and many more fearfully mangled. If we should allow the successful men to copyright any topic they once happen to camp upon, what the devil would you and I and a very numerous tribe do?

". . . Ran across these lines of Helen Hunt Jackson; have been haunting me ever since:

"His thoughts were song, his life was singing,
Men's hearts like harps he held and smote,
But ever in his heart went ringing,
Ringing the song he never wrote

"Yours, as ever, sincerely,"

"April 22, 1899.
"My dear friend:

"I remember 'Thomas the Doubter.' A friend of mine quoted portions of it one night, but I was just dozing off and failed to follow him. It is very good, and how one can, in the face of it, stomach such things as the infinite mercy of the most infinitely merciless of creators, is more than I can understand. Pardon the double superlative. . . .

". . . I sometimes fear that, while I shall surely develop expression some day, I lack in origination. Perhaps this feeling is due to the fact that almost every field under the sun, and over it too, has been so thoroughly exploited by others. Sometimes I hit upon a catchy title, and just as sure as I do I find some one else has already used it.

". . . Ha! ha! You demand comfort in place of conventionality, eh? Ditto here. To-morrow I shall put on a white shirt, and I shall do it under protest. I wear a sweater most of the time, and pay calls, etc., in a bicycle suit. My friends have passed through the stage of being shocked, and no matter what I should do henceforth, would, I know, remark It's only Jack. I once rode a saddle horse from Fresno to the Yosemite Valley, clad in almost tropical nudity, with a ball room fan and a silk parasol. It was amusing to witness the countryside turn out as I went along. Some of my party who lagged behind, heard guesses hazarded as to whether I was male or female. The women of the party were tenderly nurtured, and I hardly know if they have recovered yet, or if their proprieties rather have yet come down to normal. In fact, there was only one I failed to disturb, and he was the rugged old Chinese cook—nothing shocked him except the Mariposa Big Trees. Coming unexpectedly upon the first one . . . he blurted forth 'Gee Glist! Chop'm up four foot ties, make'm one damn railroad!' . . .

"As to evening dress, I think many a man looks extremely well in it. Of course, not all by a large majority. I like that clean feeling of well fitting clothes, etc.—which is strange for one who has passed through as many dirty periods as I have. But there are very few women I care to see in décolleté. . . . As to the breeding of cripples, I shall try to get something uncompressed before marrying, and then, if I have to take her off to a desert isle,

I'll see that no compression goes on while she is carrying any flesh and bone of mine. Barrenness is a terrible thing for a woman; but the paternal instinct is so strong in me that it would almost kill me to be the father of a child not physically or men tally sound. Sometimes I think, because this is so very strong in me, that I am destined to die childless. I can understand a Napoleon divorcing a Josephine, even casting aside state reasons. At the same time, I could not do likewise under similar circumstances. I can condone in others what I haven't the heart, or have too much heart to do myself.

"How one wanders on!

"I also send you some of my schoolboy work. Stuff written years ago. . . . Through reading it you may gain a comprehension of one of my many sides, though of course you must take into consideration my youth at the time of writing, if you should try to weigh my presentation of the subjects in hand. People thought I would outgrow that condition and fall back into the conservative ways of thinking. I am happy to say they were mistaken. But believe me, while a radical, I am not fanatical; nor am I anything but normal, and fallible, in all affairs of reason. Emotion is quite another matter. The trouble is so few understand Socialism or its advocates. But I shall cut this short, else I will be delivering a diatribe on the dismal science.

". . . There is only one kind of infallibility that I can tolerate, nay, I can enjoy it, and that is the infallibility of the good-natured fool. As for cowardice in man: I can forgive the errors of a generation of women far more easily than one poltroon of the opposite gender.

"'In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.'

Such, in all things, is what I admire in men. The 'fine frenzy' of the poet can rouse no greater number of tingles along my spine than a Captain going down on the bridge with his ship; the leading of a forlorn hope, or even a criminal who puts up a plucky fight against overwhelming odds. . . . Say what you will, I love that

magnificent scoundrel, Rupert of Hentzau. And a man who can take a blow or an insult unmoved, without retaliating—Paugh!—I care not if he can voice the sublimest sentiments, I sicken."

April 30, 1899.
"My dear friend:—

". . . I like the form of refusal you sent me. Here you will find a couple I received the middle of this week. Disagree with both as a matter of course. Can t see any other ending, in the nature of things, to the McClure Ms., while Frank Leslie's well, that poor young American girl who must n't be shocked, nor receive anything less insipid than mare s milk she seems to rule our destinies.

". . . So you, also, are a Socialist? How we are growing! I remember when you could almost count them on one s great toes in Oakland. Job Harriman is considered to be the best popular socialist speaker on the Coast; Austin Lewis the best historical, and Strawn-Hamilton the best philosophical. The latter has just gone to his old home in Mississippi, where he remains until December. Then he will go to Washington to fill a private secretaryship under some legislative relative. He spent 48 straight hours with me a couple of days before he went. He has a marvelous brain, one, I think, which could put that of Macaulay s to shame. He has served no less than twenty-nine sentences for vagrancy, to say nothing of the times turned up on trial, in the several years preceding his joining the socialists. As interesting a character in his way as your Holt, who, by the way, I would like to run across. The world is full of such, only the world does not generally know it. But I don t agree with you regarding the death stroke to individuality coming with the change of system. There will always be leaders, and no man can lead without fighting for his position—leaders in all branches. Sometimes I feel as you do about it, but not for long at a time.

"I see we at least agree about courage. A man without courage is to me the most despicable thing under the sun, a travesty on the whole scheme of creation.

". . . You misunderstand me. It was the very strength of paternal desire, coupled with the perversity of things, which made me feel doubtful of ever realizing it. The things we wish the

most for usually pass us by—at least that has been my experience. He who fears death usually dies, unless he is too contemptible, and then the gods suffer him to live on and damn his fellow creatures.

". . . See Frank Norris has been taken up by the McClures. Have you read his 'Moran of the Lady Letty'? It's well done.

" . . . My mother also wishes to be cremated. I think it is the cleanest and healthiest, and best; but somehow, I don't care what becomes of my carcass when I have done with it. As for being buried alive—he's a lucky devil who can die twice, and no matter how severe the pang, it's only for a moment. I am sure the pain of dissolution can be no greater than the moment the forceps are laid upon a jumping tooth. If it is greater, then it must be stunning in its effect.

"Do you remember Robert Louis Stevenson moralizing on death in his 'Inland Voyage'? It is a beautiful expansion of 'Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die.'

You asked about the age of Prof. Markham: I saw him down at the Section last Sunday night, when Jordan spoke on 'The Man Who Was Left.' He (Markham) is a noble looking man, snow white hair and beard, and very close to sixty. I send you a miserable reporter's account of the meeting, in which nobody or nothing is done justice.

"You really must pardon this letter; my mind is dead for the time being. Have been reading a little too heavily. Just as a sample, I shall give you a list of what I am as present working on, to say nothing of three daily papers, and a stagger of an attempt at current literature:

"Saint-Amand's Revolution of 1848.'
Brewster's 'Studies in Structure and Style.'
Jordan's 'Footnotes to Evolution.'
Tyrell's 'Sub-Arctics,'

and Böhm-Bawerk's 'Capital and Interest'—this latter is a refutation of Carl Marx's theory of values, as determined or measured by labor.

"Good night—By the way, I have forgotten to inform you that an unwelcome guest has annoyed me all evening, and is now getting

ready to crawl into bed. This has bothered me not a little. He is such a fool."

"Dear:———

"Yours to hand yesterday morning; caught me in bed, and sick abed for the first time in over three years. But I couldn't stand the pressure, so got up in the afternoon. Feeling too heavy and forlorn to-day to do anything, hence, this prompt reply. Your brother has already remarked that little trait of mine; inflicting letters upon my friends, only at such periods that I cannot do anything else.

"What am I doing? Same old thing. Got a twenty-five dollar offer from Youth and Age. Not so bad, or at least better than having the thing die in my drawer. It stands for ten days work, so I get two and a half per day for it. I notice in to-day's want column of the Examiner an ad. which runs to the following purpose: 'Wanted: a bright, intelligent, well educated young man, thoroughly competent at stenography and typewriting, for office work. References required. $4 per week to commence.' He who runs may read—he'd have to work nearly two months to get what I expect to get.

"And there's this redeeming feature in thus getting rid of my earlier work: it cleans up my books ; reduces my stamp outlay; and gives me the wherewithal to send new things a-traveling. . . .

"Sea Sprite and Shooting Star: Held the 'Call' up to find out whether they paid or not. Their reply was 'not.' Then I told them to return; they replied by giving me hogwash and sending proofsheets. Subsequent letter from me to them was courteously sententious, and if, on top of that, they dare to publish, I'll sue them.

". . . Have you seen this month's Black Cat? It has my story, written a couple of years ago, revised hastily and then sadly man-

gled by those at the other end. It can only be taken for a penny's worth of rot. You have not told me of 'The Son of the Wolf.' May Overland, have you seen it? Maynard Dixon has done excellent work—excellent is even too weak to do him justice. . . .

"Then I received a refusal from Frank Leslie's Monthly. . . . 'Well written, too risque for our use. We would be glad to consider a short story if you wish to submit one in the Fall.' . . . Encouraging, to say the least. Well, well, plenty of dig, and an equal amount of luck may enable me some day to make perhaps a small livelihood out of the pen. But what's the diff.? I get so hungry sometimes, hungry for all I have not, that I'd rather quit the whole thing and lie down for the good long sleep, did I not have my mother to look out for. This world holds so much, and it takes but such a little to get a fair share of it"——

"My dear friend:—

"Back again at the machine. How one grows to miss it ! And you did not mention my scrawl—said scrawl feels slighted. . . .

"I do most heartily agree with you as regards drowning. My stock statement is that I should prefer hanging to drowning. From this you may infer that I, as a strong swimmer, have had some experience. One notable instance was similar to the one you mention as happening to you: that of being dragged down by another, who, perhaps, wasn't worth saving. It happened to me by the dock, with a crowd above but not a boat or boat hook to be had, and the tide very low—twenty feet nearly from the water to the top of the wharf. I was about sixteen, and the lad I was trying to pull out, a wharf-rat of about twelve or thirteen. Really, I saw nothing of my past life, nor beautiful scenes, nor blissful sensations. My whole consciousness was concentrated upon the struggle, my sensation upon the awful feeling of suffocation. An other time, I fought a lonely battle in the ocean surf on a coral beach. Carelessly going in swimming from a sheltered nook, I had drifted too far out and along the shore, and not having the strength to stem my way back, was forced to a landing on the open beach. Not a soul in sight. The seas would swat me onto the

beach and jerk me clear again. I'd dig hand and foot into the sand, but fail to hold. It was a miracle that I finally did pull out, nearly gone, in a fainting condition, and pounded into a jelly-like condition." Here he gives a brief account of his attempted suicide by drowning in the Carquinez Straits, ending with "And I was about gone, paddling as the man in the Black Cat paddled, with the land breeze sending each snappy little wave into my mouth. Was still keeping afloat mechanically, when a couple of fishermen from Vallejo picked me up, and can dimly recollect being hauled over the side. No, drowning is not a pleasant shuffle.

". . . As with you, socialism was evolutionary, though I came to it quite a while ago. You say, 'that to retain a leadership one must possess, or acquire, all the virtues which society and politics demand of their favorites—hypocricy, insincerity, deceit, etc.' Robt. Louis Stevenson was a man looked up to, a leader of certain very large classes, in certain very fine ways. I am sure he lacked those virtues. So it would be in all the arts, sciences, professions, sports, etc.  . . . Of course, I realize you mainly applied your statement to politics. But have you ever figured how much of this fawning and low trickery, etc., is due to party politics; and with the removal of party politics and the whole spoils system from the field, cannot you figure a better class of men coming to the fore as political leaders—men, whose sterling qualities to-day prevent them crawling through the muck necessary to attain party chieftainship?

". . . How concisely you analyzed the lack of unity in the May tale—a lack of unity which you may see is recognized in the very title, 'The Men of Forty Mile.' The sub-heading was not of my doing, as were none of the others. I wonder what you will think of 'In a Far Country,' which comes out in the June Number, and which contains no reference to Malemute Kid or any other character which has previously appeared. As I recollect my own judgment of it, it is either bosh, or good; either the worst or the best of the series I have turned out. I shall await your opinion of it with impatience.

". . . We live and learn. With such letters as this, the stereotyped forms of ending have always tortured me. I now comprehend the beauty of yours and make haste to adopt it.

"Jack London."

"May 28, 1899.
"My dear friend:—

". . . further, believe me, I do not look for the regeneration of mankind in a day: nor do I think man must be born again before socialism can attain its ends. The first motor principle of the movement is selfishness, pure, downright selfishness; the elevation merely an ultimate and imperative result of better environment.

". . . As you have lost your respect for Roosevelt, so had I long ago lost mine for George Washington, because of the ill manner in which he, too, treated Paine—Paine, who in this case was a contemporary, and who had in his own way done probably as much for the American Revolution as had his immortal traducer. However, I believe you to be less tolerant than I, at least concerning religion. Apropos of Dewey's alleged remark that God superintended the fight in Manila Bay, and your conjecture as to whether he (Dewey) ever took the trouble to notice that God did n't prevent the blowing up of the Maine, brings to recollection a similar query from the 'Social Contract' of Jean Jacques Rosseau: 'All power comes from God, I acknowledge it; but all sickness comes from Him, too: does that mean that it is forbidden to call a physician?'" Jack then devotes a paragraph to Schopenhauer's "terrific arraignment of women, or rather his philippic against them," and precedes some extracts: "Don't believe that I endorse them in toto."

"June 7, 1899.
"Dear friend:—

". . . I have been busy. Have been going out more than at any other time in the past eight months; have been studying harder than ever in my life before; and have been turning out more copy than hitherto. Finding that I must go out more and that I was becoming stale and dead, I have really ventured to be gay in divers interesting ways.

"Yes; the time for Utopias and dreamers is past. Coöperative colonies, etc., are at best impossible (I don't mean religious ones), and never was there less chance for their survival than to-day."

"June 12, 1899.
"My dear friend:

"Yes, I agree with you, 'In a Far Country' should have been the best of the series, but was not. As to the clumsiness of struc-

ture, you have certainly hit it. I doubt if I shall ever be able to polish. I permit too short a period—one to fifteen minutes—to elapse between the longhand and the final MS. You see, I am groping, groping for my own particular style, for the style which should be mine but which I have not yet found.

"As to plagiarism: you seem very hyper-sensitive on the subject. Know thou, that 'In a Far Country' was written long after I had read your 'Norton-Drake Co.' Yet I had no thought of the coincidence till you mentioned it. Great God! Neither you nor I have been the first to make use of a broken back, nor, because of this fact, should we be debarred from using it. How many broken legs, broken backs, broken hearts, etc., have been worked up, over and over again? . . . Take 'White Silence,' how many have made use of a falling tree. For instance, Captain Kettle in June Pearson's.  . . . I see no reason in the world why you should cut the broken back out of 'Charge it to the Company.' . . .

"Pardon brevity. I have been writing this and entertaining half a dozen friends at the same time. Really don't know what I have been saying."

". . . How I envy you the thrill of life, such as must surely have been gained through your mix-up with the Greasers. In this prosy city existence I have even failed to tangle up with a lone footpad. And one cannot really come to appreciate one s life, save by playing with it and hazarding it a little.

". . . Have also tried my hand at storiettes for Munsey, but without success, then I ship same off to Tillitson & Son, 203 Broadway, N. Y. C. Figuring it up, it seems to me they pay some where around four dollars per thousand. . . . They are a syndicate . . . but their demand for such stuff seems unlimited. I don t like that kind of work, myself, as I can readily see you do not. . . .

Yes; going out more isn't a bad idea; but as to the less study, can't agree with you. My mind has at least reached partial maturity and I believe I know how far I may go without injury to it. And when I do go out, I assure you I go out with a vengeance, and throw utterly to the winds all thought and worry of my every-day life. And it has been my luck never to be without

the one companion to share with me temporary oblivion. No; I don't mean dope, but a proper unadulterated good time with one who knows a good time when it is seen.

"How rabid you are! I feel called upon, for that matter, to tell you that you are really narrow in some things. Remember, the infidel that positively asserts that there is no God, no first cause, is just as imbecile a creature as the deist that asserts positively that there is a God, a first cause. Have you ever read Herbert Spencer's First Principles of synthetic philosophy, and noted the line, the adamantine line of demarkation he draws between the knowable and the unknowable. Pardon me, I should not have allowed myself this discursion, for I have never heard you make that rash negative assertion. But, as regards your Anglo-Saxon views. In one breath you say you are of pure Anglo-Saxon descent on both sides and that your descent (evidently on one side at least) can be traced to the Welsh kings. Know thou, that the Welsh blood is really no nearer (save geographically) and no farther away from the Anglo-Saxon, than is the Hindoo blood of India or the Iranic of Persia. The Welsh, of which breed were the Welsh kings you mention, belongs to the Celtic branch of the Aryan Family, as the pure Russian does to the Slavonic, the Hindoo and Persian to the Indo-Iranic. All the same family, but distinctly different branches. What is the Anglo-Saxon, as we understand it to-day? Let me make you miserable with a little history and ethnology." And he goes on at some length polishing up his memory of what he has read, continuing :

"But enough, this is not my hobby, as you may think, but only one portion of my philosophy or whatever you wish to call the entire edifice of my views. Some day we shall meet and I may be able to explain myself better."

"Remember, there is even a higher logic than moral or formal logic. Moral and formal logic demonstrate thoroughly that woman shall vote; but the higher logic says she shall not. Why? Because she is woman; because she carries that within her that will prevent, that which will no more permit her economic and suffragal inde-

pendence, that it will permit her to refrain from sacrificing herself to the uttermost to man. I speak of woman in general. So, with the race problem. The different families of man must yield to law—to LAW, inexorable, blind, unreasoning law, which has no knowledge of good or ill, right or wrong; which has no preference, grants no favors, whether to the atoms in a molecule of water or to any of the units in our whole sidereal system; which is unconscious, abstract, just as is Time, Space, Matter, Motion; of which it is impossible to postulate a beginning nor an end. This is the law, the higher logic, which the petty worms of men must bow to, whether they will or no.

"Socialism is not an ideal system, devised by man for the happiness of all life; nor for the happiness of all men; but it is devised for the happiness of certain kindred races. It is devised so as to give more strength to these certain kindred favored races so that they may survive and inherit the earth to the extinction of the lesser, weaker races. The very men who advocate socialism, may tell you of the brotherhood of all men, and I know they are sincere; but that does not alter the law—they are simply instruments, working blindly for the betterment of these certain kindred races, and working detriment to the inferior races they would call brothers. It is the law; they do not know it, perhaps; but that does not change the logic of events."

In reply to yours of Dec. 24, 1915. . . . God abhors a mongrel. In nature there is no place for a mixed-breed. The purest breeds, when they are interbred, produce mongrels. Breed a Shire stallion to a Thoroughbred mare, and you get a mongrel. Breed a pure specimen of greyhound to a pure specimen of bulldog, and you get mongrels. The purity of the original strains of blood seems only to

increase the mongrelization that takes place when these strains are interbred or cross-bred.

"Consult the entire history of the human world in all past ages, and you will find that the world has ever belonged to the pure breed and has never belonged to the mongrel. I give you this as a challenge: Read up your history of the human race. Remember, Nature permits no mongrel to live—or, rather, Nature permits no mongrel to endure.

"There's no use in your talking to me about the Greeks. There are not any Greeks. You are not a Greek. The Greeks died two thousand years ago, when they became mongrelized. Just because a lot of people talk the Greek language, does not make those people pure Greeks. Because a lot of people talk Italian, does not make them Roman. The Greeks were strong as long as they remained pure. They were possessed with power, achievement, culture, creativeness, individuality. When they mongrelized themselves by breeding with the slush of conquered races, they faded away, and have played nothing but a despicable part ever since in the world's history. This is true of the Roman; this is true of the Lombards; this is true of the Phoenicians; this is true of the Chaldeans; this is true of the Egyptians; this is not true of the Gipsies, who have kept themselves pure. This is not true of the Chinese, it is not true of the Japanese, this is not true of the Germans, this is not true of the Anglo-Saxons. This is not true of the Yaquis of Mexico. It is true of the fifteen million mongrels of Mexico; it is true of the mongrels that inhabit the greater portion of the West Indies, and who inhabit South America and Central America from Cape Horn to the Rio Grande. This is true of the mongrelized Hindoos.

"Read up your history. It is all there on the shelves. And find me one case where you can breed a greyhound with a bulldog and get anything but a mongrel. Read up your history. You will find it all there on the shelves. And find me one race that has retained its power of civilization, culture, and creativeness, after it mongrelized itself. Read up your history, and try to find any remnant of a pure Roman race, of a pure Hindoo race. . . .

"You know how I am. I talk straight out. When I am asked to hit straight from the shoulder, I hit straight from the shoulder.

It is now up to you to come back at me on the very question at issue. . . .

"And, in conclusion, let me repeat—you know the straight talker I am—that no matter how straight-out and savagely I talk, my hand rests no less warmly upon your shoulder, and that only you can be offended by me, and that you cannot offend me.

"Affectionately yours."

". . . 'The artist is known by what he omits.' That is my chiefest obstacle, one that I am fully aware of, and one that I struggle ceaselessly to overcome. That is why I am trying my hand at storiettes. I do not like them, but I realize what excellent training they give. Also, the shekels they bring in are not exactly distasteful to me. To me, all my work is practice, experimentative, and I consider myself lucky to be able to sell the sheets of my copybook.

"Forty-six stories—I have not written that many in all my life—why it's a book! Neither have I ever written a book. Nor shall I till I consider myself prepared, and time and place, and man are met."

"Just got home this morning, and have been hard at it ever since. Have written fifteen hundred words of a new story, transacted all my business, started a few more of my returned children on the turf (as you put it), and am now winding up the last letter of my correspondence. Go away again on Friday, for a jaunt on wheels down country with a young lady whom I have been promising for some time. She made me a call to-day and fore-closed. We stop with mutual friends along the way."

"As for myself, I believe in these present marriage customs and laws, but that is no reason why I should sway my tale one way or the other for aught save the tale's sake. As for my judgment of the tale, I like it least of the series. Just about as much as I do the next which is now in press and which is the last of the Overland series. ["The Wife of a King."]

"As to the hog-train—when a passenger goes by in the daylight, shunning six-wheelers it has been my custom to swing under between the trucks and ride the rods—by this I do not mean the gunnels, brake-beams, or springs, or brake-rods. I have often gone along that way in the daytime, with feet cocked up, reading a novel, peering out at the scenery, and enjoying a comfortable if sometimes dusty smoke.

" . . . As soon as I get well ahead of the game—very problematical—I shall escape all my friends, and creditors alas! by engaging cabin passage on a big English ship for a voyage round the Horn to Europe. Shall go aboard with a box of books, a typewriter, and several boxes of paper, and say! I won't do a thing to things in general and particular. I'll write some sea yarns soaked in the atmosphere, besides other and what I would consider more important work, and do no end of reading up all that which the present and continuous flood of current literature will not permit me to enjoy. Ah plans, plans! How many have I builded! and how few have I realized.

"July 29, 1899.
"My dear friend:

"Trip knocked out in the middle. Whole lot of company came to house—very small house. . . . Well, we had some of our fun anyway.

"Guests are at last gone, and am too flabbergasted to get to work. Have all kinds of work awaiting me, too. Did you ever write a yarn of, say, twelve thousand words, every word essential to atmosphere, and then get an order to cut out three thousand of these words, somewhere, somehow? That's what the Atlantic has just done to me. Hardly know whether I shall do it or not. It's like the pound of flesh. [This was "An Odyssey of the North," published in Atlantic the following January.] Say, am hammering away at that Cosmopolitan essay, at spare intervals. . . . Am thoroughly satisfied, as far as I have gone, which is saying a

good deal for me—am usually sick at this stage, and it's such dry, dissertative stuff after all.

". . . Drop in on us when you do come. Small house, but usually plenty of fair steak, chops, etc., in the larder. I am a heavy eater, but a plain one, fruit, vegetables and meat, and plenty of them, but with small regard for pastries, etc. If you ve a sweet tooth you will not receive accommodation here except in the fruit line and the candy stores.

". . . 0, by the way, just to show how this business of placing MSS. is a despairing one. Long years ago—three, anyway, I wrote a synopsis of 'The Road,' under that title, describing tramps and their ways of living, etc. It has been everywhere—every syndicate and big Sunday edition refused it as a feature article; but I kept it going. And lo, to-day, came a note of acceptance of same from the Arena. Think I'll resurrect some of my old returned third rate work and send it to Harper's, Century, etc. That is, if there is any chance of their accepting what tenth class publications have refused. . . .

"And say, when a third rate magazine publishes something of yours, and you wait thirty days after publication for pay, and then dun them, and then they do not even answer your note, what do you do? Is there any way of proceeding against them? Or must one suffer dumbly? Tell me, tell me—I'd like to make it hot for some of those Eastern sharks.

"And in these pay-on-acceptance fellows, did you ever get your check at the same time you were notified of acceptance? They always make me an offer, first, and then I needs must sit idly and grow weary and sick at heart waiting during the period between my closing with offer and the arrival of the all-needful. . . .

". . . As you say, I am firm. I may sometimes appear impatient at nothing at all, and all that; but this everybody who has had a chance to know me well have noticed: things come my way even though they take years; no one sways me, save in little things of the moment; I am not stubborn but I swing to my purpose as steadily as the needle to the pole; delay, evade, oppose secretly or openly, it's all immaterial, the thing comes my way. To-day I have met my first serious wall. For three long years the fight has been on; to-day it balances; is a deadlock; I may have

met my master; I may not; the future will tell, and one or the other of us will break and on top of it all I may say it concerns neither my interest or theirs, nothing except the personal vanity and the clash of our wills. 'I won't' and 'I will' sums the whole thing up.

"Firm? But I am firm in foolishness, as well as other things. Take things more seriously than you? Bosh! You don't know me. Ask my very intimate friends. Ask my creditors. Pshaw—let this illustrate: a very dear friend, a woman charming enough to be my wife, and old enough to be my mother, discovered that my most precious possession, my wheel, was hocked. You know I only live for the day. She at once put up the all-needful so that I might regain it. She could well afford it, so that was all right; but mark you, she virtually had a lien upon it. Well, to top it—had been extravagant on the strength of receiving money which did not materialize. Creditors waxed clamorous; a few dollars judiciously scattered among them would have eased things; but credit exhausted; along comes a particularly nice person for a good time. A very nice person who wished to see things; wheel hypothecated and things seen for some forty odd hours. This is me all the time and all over—seriously take things of life—does it look like it? Pshaw. Ask those who know me.

"And I am firm in my foolishness.

"I am glad you took Jordan in the right way. He is, to a certain extent, a hero of mine. He is so clean, and broad, and wholesome. Would to God he were duplicated a few thousand times in the U. S. Working for a sheep-skin! That's what most fools do who go in for education, and most of the rest are geniuses and cranks, who get the kernel and then don't or won't use it.

". . . As for my writing histories and works on economics—I may, some day but I have little ambition to do so. The same may be said of any kind of writing under the sun. My only wish that way is the all-needful—it seems the easiest way. Had I an assured income, my ambition would be for music, music, music. As it is, impossible—I bend."

Aug. 10, 1899.
"Dear Friend:

"Same old tale. Wound off one visitor the first of last week, to receive at once two more—they have just now gone home. I'll get even with them yet, so that even their letters, much less them-

selves shall not reach me. I see you have been suffering a similar affliction.

"Say, remember telling me if I got a check from Town Topics to frame it? After acceptance I let them slip for several months, then wrote them a nice little note of enquiry—five lines—and behold! They dug up a dollar for that triolet—'He Chortled with Glee', and two twenty-five for the poem 'If I Were God One Hour.' You mentioned the Owl as a snare and a delusion. Well, they haven't got the best of me yet, at least that's all I can say. You know I wrote long ago a lot of stuff upon which I wasted many stamps. Nor would I retire it if hope of getting my postage back still lived. And I must say I have succeeded in disposing of quite a lot of rubbish that way by sending it to the way down publications. The Owl published a skit of mine a couple of months ago. When they made the offer for it, I almost fainted—One Dollar and Fifty cents for two thousand words. But it more than paid for the stamps I had wasted on the thing, and gave promise of release from at least one of my early night-mares, so I closed with the offer. But they have not yet paid me. Then the question arises: why should they have made such a miserable offer if they intended to take the whole works ? And one answer suggests itself: that from very shame at the smallness of the selling price, the author would refrain from making any trouble in the event of non-payment. However, I am devoid of that kind of shame.

"Yes, I cut the story for the Atlantic. There were 12,250 words; but while they wanted it reduced three thousand, I only succeeded in getting it down to an even ten thousand. So I don't know what they will do about it. They seem very nice people from their letters, but that, however, remains to be substantiated by something solid. Have also sent Houghton, Mifflin & Co., collection of tales. [This was "The Son of the Wolf" collection.]

"I closed with a cash offer of ten dollars, and five yearly subscriptions with the Arena, so probably it is alright with them. Say, it's great, learning the inner nature of some of these concerns!

"O but I do take myself seriously. My self-estimation has been made in very sober moments. I early learned that there were two natures in me. This caused me a great deal of trouble, till I worked out a philosophy of life and struck a compromise between the flesh and the spirit. Too great an ascendancy of either was to

be abnormal, and since normality is almost a fetish of mine, I finally succeeded in balancing both natures. Ordinarily they are at equilibrium; yet as frequently as one is permitted to run rampant, so is the other. I have small regard for an utter brute or for an utter saint.

"A choice of ultimate happiness in preference to proximate happiness, when the element of chance is given due consideration, is, I believe, the wisest course for a man to follow under the sun. He that chooses proximate happiness is a brute; he that chooses immortal happiness is an ass; but he that chooses ultimate happiness knows his business.

". . . I doubt if even you would consider the novel avowedly with a purpose to be real literature. If you do, then let us abandon fiction altogether and give the newspaper its due, for the fixing or changing of public opinion especially on lesser things. But Spencer's 'First Principles' alone, leaving out all the rest of his work, has done more for mankind, and through the ages will have done far more for mankind than a thousand books like 'Nicholas Nickleby,' 'Hard Cash,' 'Book of Snobs,' and 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.' Why, take the enormous power for human good contained in Darwin's 'Origin of Species' and 'Descent of Man.' Or in the work of Ruskin, Mill, Huxley, Carlyle, Ingersoll. . . .

"As to 'that retired stuff'—many thanks for your kind offer; but really, I shall never resurrect it again. Whenever I get to thinking too much of myself I simply look some of it up, and am at once reduced to a more becoming modesty. No, it's put away for good. I have very little out, just now. And it's growing less all the time. It will soon catch me up, I'm afraid, if I don't get down and dig.

"Well, say, hold on a minute. Let me explain. But first let me say how glad I was that you liked 'The Wife of a King.' But I was candid, though I cannot for the life of me remember what 'shameful comparison' I made in letter to you concerning it. This is the way it happened. I had the most terrific dose of blues I ever was afflicted with in my life. I couldn't think of anything original, so I made a composite of three retired MSS., slapped them together, as I at the time considered, haphazard, with the crudest of dovetailing. Shipped the result off in disgust, and forgot all about it, save a most uncomfortable sense of general dissatisfaction. And

for the first time, when I looked upon it printed, I was not wholly disgusted with myself—not because it was the best I had done, but because I had rated it so low that disappointment or disgust seemed impossible.

"Are there any phases of humanity, under any combinations which have not already been exploited? Yet I think I have for some time had an entirely original field in view, so why should I ask? But who knows. . . . I should think the only way to write a novel would be to do it at a fair rate per day, and then ship off at once. If I can only get ahead of the game, I'm going to jump back to Jerusalem in the time of Christ, and write one giving an entirely new interpretation of many things which occurred at that time. I think I can do it, so that while it may rattle the slats of the Christians they will still be anxious to read it."

"College Park, May 13/99.

"Dear Friend:—

"A friend has taken it into his head to die; so, in resultant tangle, am at present wasting time at present quarters. Must acknowledge receipt of 'Splendid Spur,' also of two letters, which same I shall answer on my return home. Yes, 'Q' did good work when he completed 'St. Ives.' . . . How do you like my scrawl?"

"962 East 16th St.,
"Aug. 24, 1899.

"My dear friend:—

"'Frisco and Oakland have been roaring since last evening, when the Sherman was sighted. Nor will things quiet down till the week is past. So no work for me—besides, have had another friend to stop with me.

". . . Am going down country the first of next month to pose as best man for a foolish friend of mine who has abandoned the torturing of catgut for the harmony of matrimony. And I have to dig up a wedding present besides! Wow! . . .

"Have you read anything of Weismann's? He has struck a heavy blow to the accepted idea of acquired characters being in herited, and as yet his opponents have not proved conclusively

one case in which such a character has been inherited. Another idea he advances well, is that death is not the indispensable correlative of life, as hitherto it has been supposed to be. In fact, his researches in the germ-plasm have proven quite the contrary. Read him up, you will find him interesting. But it s heavy. If you have not studied evolution well, I would not advise you to tackle him. He takes a thorough grounding in the subject for granted.

"Are you going in for that Black Cat Prize Competition? It has just been announced, and the time is not up till the 31st of March, 1900. The style, etc., is worth imitating for the money—if one thinks he is able to do it. I intend having a go at it. I . . . to-day received confirmation of acceptance of my MS. from the Atlantic. But say, can you explain this to me? I understand that they pay on acceptance. Well, to-day acceptance comes with assurance of publication in an early number, and that is all. No check, no nothing concerning rate of payment, when, or how.

". . . Was there ever a luckier fellow than I when it comes to friends? I doubt it. And between you and myself, I likewise greatly fear for the bit of femininity who takes me for little better and much worse. . . .

". . . But really, I shall have to ask you to accept this stuff as a letter. I have striven and striven and striven. It is warm; doors and windows are open. Three youngsters are playing on the porch before my window. Their elders are in the parlor. My guest and a temporary visitor are in the same room with me, waxing hotter and hotter over some mooted point in that much mooted question of telepathy, so I must call quits, . . ."

"Sept. 6, 1899.
"My dear friend:—

"Back again, but not yet settled down. Have blown myself for a new wheel ('99 Cleveland), and hence, between appearing at weddings in knickerbockers and rampaging over the country with bloomer-clad lassies, and celebrating the return of the Californians, I have been unable to chase ink. The way I happened to get said wheel is an illustration of how little rhyme or reason there is in placing MSS. Some time ago I wrote an avowedly hack article for an agricultural paper, expecting to receive five dollars for the same, and to receive it anywhere from sixty to ninety days after

acceptance. But it was rejected, and, being short at the time, I was correspondingly dejected. But straight away I shipped off the MS. to the Youth's Companion, and lo and behold, without any warnings, they forwarded me a check for thirty-five dollars—eleven dollars per thousand. How's that for luck?

". . . Don't weep over what the National did they pay poorly. Some time ago they accepted one of my ancient efforts, for which they gave me five yearly subscriptions, and five dollars cash, pay on publication. I expect it to come out in the September number. God bless the publishers.

". . . Go it for the Black Cat! I cannot even think of a suit able plot—my damnable lack of origination you see. I think I had better become an interpreter of the things which are, rather than a creator of the things which might be.

44 . . . Well, time is flying; I've got a visitor as usual, spending a few days with me, and as I hear the tinkle of his bicycle bell approaching, I must cut off. But just you watch my smoke some of these days—I intend shaking every mortal who knows me and going off all by myself."

"Sept. 12, 1899.
"My dear friend:—

"Between engagements, visitors, and friends, I have not yet succeeded in doing a tap. And to-morrow I start out on that postponed trip of mine to Stanford University and Mt. Hamilton, to say nothing of way points. And when I return from that I am going to lock myself up." [In an unimportant handwritten post script he signs himself "J. G. L."—the only instance I know where he used his middle initial.]

"Sept. 20, 1899.
"Dear Cloudesley:—

"Back again. Had a glorious time. Stopped over at Stanford, where I met several students I know, sat under the various profs., etc. And looked through the thirty-six inch reflector on top of Mt. Hamilton. There we saw the moon, Saturn and his rings, and quite a number of bourgeois pigs. Yes, they were pigs, dressed like tourists. My companion and I, after seeing them, were exceeding proud of the fact that we were mere proletarians. . . .

". . . Ah, therein you differ from me—it's money I want, or rather, the things money will buy; and I could never possibly have

too much. As to living on practically nothing—I propose to do as little of that as I possibly can. Remember, it's the feed not the breed which makes the man. . . .

". . . As an artisan cannot work without tools, so a man cannot think without a vocabulary, and the greater his vocabulary the better fitted he is to think. Of course, an ass may acquire the tools of an artisan and be unable to work with them, so with words. But that does not interfere with the broad statement I have laid down." . . .

"Sept. 26, 1899.
"Dear Cloudesley:—

". . . Did I ever mention a MS. I received in response to a trailer, which same MS. had been O.K'd and blue-penciled? Well, such happened to me some time ago. Without removing marks or anything I shipped it off to Youth's Companion. There were fifteen hundred words to it. Last week a check comes for twenty-five. Say I m having lots of luck with the Companion, sending them my old, almost-ready-to-be-retired stuff. . . . They pay good and promptly. Though such work won't live, it at least brings the ready cash.

". . . How I envy you when you say that you do not write for publication. There is certainly far greater chance for you to gain the goal you have picked out than for me who am in pursuit of dollars, dollars, dollars. Yet I cannot see how I can do otherwise, for a fellow must live, and then there are also others depending upon me. However, I shall once and a while make it a point to sit down and deliberately not write for publication. . . .

". . . Have begun to isolate myself from my friends—a few at a time. But those I have managed to dispense with are the easy ones. I can't see my way clear to the others except by running away. But instead of the desert I'11 take to sea. Many who know me, ask why I, with my knowledge of the sea, do not write some sea fiction. But you see I have been away from it so long that I have lost touch. I must first get back and saturate myself with its atmosphere. Then perhaps I may do something good. . . .

". . . Viewing this world through the eyes of science I can see no reason at all why a person should be the slightest bit pessimistic. Why, it's all good, considering man's relation to it. . . .

P.S.—Did I inform you that I am once more an uncle. It was born nearly a month ago. [This was Eliza Shepard's only child, Irving, before mentioned.]

"Oct. 3, 1899.
"Dear Cloudesley:—

". . . Last Sunday I went off with a very nice young lady on a bicycle trip up to Mill Valley, among the redwoods at the base of Mt. Tamalpais. To do this we had to go to 'Frisco and take the ferry to Sausalito, and from thence to destination via pedals. Any number of lively young Frisco people take the same outing on Sundays, except that they do not ordinarily or extraordinarily go on bikes. They patronize the railroad. Well, on the back trip to 'Frisco, a bunch of them took the deck and raised hell generally, to the shocking of many of the more sedate passengers. Am happy to state, however, that the girl I was with, while the kingdoms of the earth could not have lured her into getting up and doing like wise, at least highly enjoyed the performance. All of which is neither here nor there. But for myself, I was attacked by all kinds of feelings. Therein you and I differ—dissipation is alluring to me. Why, my longing was intense to jump in and join them after the fashion of my wild young days, and go on after we arrived in 'Frisco and make the night of it which I knew they were going to make. Alluring? I guess yes.

"And then again, I could feel how I had grown away from so much of that lost—touch. I knew if I should happen to join them, how strangely out of place it would seem to me—duck-out-of-water sort of feeling. This made me sad; for, while I cultivate new classes, I hate to be out of grip with the old. But say, it would n't take me long to get my hand in again. Just a case of lost practice.

". . . Have been going on chess drunks of late. Did you ever yield to the toils of the game?—toils in more ways than one. It's a most fascinating game, and one which has devoured well nigh as many of my hours as cards. However, I've done very little chess in the last year or so, and this is merely a temporary relapse.

Have also been feasting my soul with some of the new books: Kipling galore, Bullen's 'Sea Idyls,' Grant Allen's 'Adventure of Miss Gayly,' and among others, Beatrice Harraden's 'Fowler'. . . ."

"Am now doing a thousand words per day, six days per week. Last week I finished 1100 words ahead of the required amount. To-day (Tuesday), I am 172 ahead of my stint. I have made it a rule to make up next day what I fall behind; but when I run ahead, to not permit it to count on the following day. I am sure a man can turn out more, and much better in the long run, working this way, than if he works by fits and starts. . . .

"How time flies! Here is Christmas at hand, and Paris approaching—ah! I wonder if the gods will smile so that I may go."

"October 24, 1899.
"Dear Cloudesley:—

Everything in confusion, visitors still here. So you're a chess player. And it's the one form of dissipation which has any attraction for you. As I can hardly look upon it in that light concerning myself, I can but conclude that you are by far the better player. Why, I have never met a good player—spent all my time teaching beginners, and you know nothing is worse for chess than that. And besides, I have never had the time to devote to it. For a year at a stretch I never see a board, and then, for a few short weeks I happen to mildly indulge. As I have not taken the time to learn properly, so I cannot play an intensive game; instead, I play viciously, not more than four moves ahead at the best, and endeavor to break up combinations as fast as my opponent forms them—that is, first, if they are threatening; and second, if the slightest and most insignificant gain will accrue to myself, such as the getting of another piece of mine in position by a trade, or by double-banking my opponent's pawns, or preventing his castling by forcing him to move his king in a trade. For the sake of this latter, when the gambit goes my way, I always trade queens. But a heavy player, once growing accustomed to my play, doesn't do a thing to me. So be it. I shall never learn chess.

"Last article published by me, had, among other typographical errors, 'Something fresh for the jaded care of the world,' instead

of 'something fresh for the jaded ear of the world.' On second thought it might have been worse.

"Think you could train yourself into becoming a hermit? For me that would be far harder than to train myself to become a suicide. I like to rub against my kind, with a gregarious instinct far stronger than in most men. A hermitage—synonym for hell.

". . . Lucrative mediocrity? I know, if I escape drink, that I shall be surely driven to it. By God! if I have to dedicate my life to it, I shall sell work to Frank A. Munsey. I'll buck up against them just as long as I can push a pen or they can retain a MS. reader about the premises. Just on general principles, you know.

". . . Am reading Stevenson's 'Virginibus Puerisque' just now. Find in this mail his 'Inland Voyage.' Return it when you have finished, as I wish to pass it along. Have read it myself. Get such books for 'Bull Durham' tobacco tags. Have sent for his 'Silverado Squatters' don't think much of it from previous read ing, but it was a long time ago, and I did it too hurriedly, I'm afraid. . . .

"So you try experiments in letter writing. I never do nor never have. Haven't the slightest idea what I'm going to say when I sit down just hammer it out as fast as I can. And right well am I pleased when I have finished the hateful task. I wouldn't do it at all, no more than I would work, were it not for the compensation. As for you, I get more originality in your letters than from all my rest put together rather jerky and jagged but refreshing and interesting. Believe me, I'm not fishing for a loan.

". . . Have been reading Jacobs' 'More Cargoes'. . . . Also have been going through Kendricks Bangs' 'The Dreamers' and 'The Bicyclers and Other Farces.' He's clever and humorous, in a mild sort of way.

"Have been digging at 'Norman's Eastern Question,' preparatory to a certain economic dissertative article I intend writing—Asia touches one of the phases I wish to deal with. Besides, I have gone through Curzon's similar work, and wish to take up soon Beresford's 'Break-up of China.' Am going through Drummond on evolution, Hudson on psychology, and reviewing Macaulay and De Quincey in the course of English in Minto which I am giving to a friend—the photographer. She's well up in the higher Math., etc., but not in general culture—coaches in the exact sciences for

would-be university students, etc. Say, that reviewing does a fellow good. I had no idea how lazy I had gotten.

"Society will never injure me—the world calls too loudly for that."

"Oct. 31, 1899.
"Dear Cloudesley:—

". . . So you deem the world as fair a synonym for hell as I do hermitage. Can't see it. There are some redeeming features. As long as there is one good woman in it, it will not hold. Why, I remember, once, when for several weeks I meditated profoundly on the policy of shuffling off. Seemed the clouds would never break. But at last they did, and I doubt if you could imagine the cause of my sweetened mood. A memory of a day, of an hour—nay, a few paltry minutes—came back to me, of a time almost lost in the dim past. I remembered—what? A woman's foot. We were by the sea. In a dare, we went wading: had to stick our feet in the hot sand till they dried; and it was those few moments which came back to me, dripping with 'sweetness and light.' Hell? Nay, not so long as one woman s foot remains above ground.

"Please don't thing I'm in love. Simply sentiment. Don't get that way often.

"Well, some time since, I started in to write a twenty-five hundred word article on 'Housekeeping in the Klondike.' [This was published in Harper's Bazaar, on September 15, 1900.] In choice of theme I had been forced to narrow, being aware of my miserable predilection. And lo, before I had got into full swing, I found that the whole article could be comfortably taken up in a discussion of bread-making. And, still narrowing, it was soon apparent that this should be divided, one single subhead to be discussed, viz.: sourdough bread-making. And so it goes. Never did a person need the gift of selection more than I.

". . . Have just completed Horace Vachell's 'The Procession of Life' . . . quite interesting, but not of the first water. . . . And any way, did you ever read that boyhood classic, 'Phaeton Rogers'? Rossiter Johnson, who edits the Whispering Gallery of the Overland, is the author. . . .

"My Atlantic story will come out, I believe, in the January number. Received a check for one hundred and twenty dollars yesterday for it, with a year's subscription thrown in. They are

very slow, but very painstaking. They even questioned the propriety of using my given name—unconventional. But they came around all right.

"Have heard nothing more concerning my collection. They do take their time about it. Nothing from the Cosmopolitan prize essay either.

"How do you like my new machine? Haven't got used to it yet. Came to-day. When I get married, guess I'll have to marry a typewriter girl. I do most heartily hate the job.

"So the poor little Boers have risen in their might. God bless them! I can admire their pluck, while at the same time laughing at their absurdity. There be higher things than formal logic or formal ethics. When a detached, antiquated fragment of a race attempts to buck that race, a spectacle is presented at once pitiful and impotent. Fools, to think that man is the object of his own volition, inasmuch that a few of him may oppose the many in a movement which does not spring from the individual but from the race, and which received its inception before even they had differentiated from the parent branch!"

"November 11, 1899.
"Dear Cloudesley:—

"You say: 'This is the beginning of the end—you'll see—and within ten years the British Empire will have followed its predecessors, the Greek, the Roman, and the French.' Well, well, well. I'd like to talk with you for a few moments. It's simply impossible to take it up on paper. The day England goes under, that day sees sealed the doom of the United States. It's the Anglo-Saxon people against the world, and economics at the foundation of the whole business; but said economics only a manifestation of the blood differentiations which have come down from the hoary past.

"This movement, dimly felt and working in strange ways, is not to be stopped in a day, or by a lesser people, or by a bunch of the same which have become anachronisms. The Boers are anachronisms. There is no place for them in the whirl of the world unless they whirl with it.

"You say, if subjugated they will still be Boers. Do you remember the Norman invasion of England? How long the Saxons held strictly apart? And how in the end, the Saxon, as a Saxon,

vanished from the face of the earth? Took several centuries, but it was accomplished.

". . . I believe Bret Harte wrote a story of a natural fool who got along nicely till he struck it rich. I'm hard at it. Am just finishing an ambitious Klondike yarn which is a failure, and before the twenty-fifth of this month have to write and read up for two essays and prepare for a speech before the Oakland Section. Haven't addressed an audience for three years; it'll seem strange.

". . . As to your suggestion regarding the finish of 'To the Man on Trail': I had never been satisfied with that ending, though too lazy to even think for an instant of attempting to better it. Your ending could not be bettered, and I shall hasten to take advantage of it. Many thanks for same. It will then leave one with a pleasant taste in the mouth. The alliterative effect you mention strikes my gaudy ear; I shall certainly use it. I want you to read my 'Odessey of the North' when it comes out. . . ."

"Nov. 21, 1899.
"Dear Cloudesley:—

"Hard at it—mostly history and economics. And yet I don't work a tithe of what you work. Why should you work seventeen hours a day? As regards your writing you positively should not do more than six—four were better. But any excess of six cannot be good stuff. . . .

". . . I never pity anybody but myself. Life is too short.

"The Overland declined my offer on specious grounds. Twenty-five dollars was stiff under the circumstances. However, I have placed a yarn with them to come out in the Christmas number. ["The Wisdom of the Trail."] O they're great people, of great heart: but heart and finance do not usually go together. . . .

". . . Very few American educated people have little else but rancor for England—a rancor which is bred by the school histories and the school traditions. All of which is utterly wrong. I have to laugh when you call Kipling a narrow, hidebound, childishly pettish, mean little man. . . . Any masculine who delights in taking down a woman's back hair will find a warm welcome in my heart.

". . . Find, with 'Editor,' when it comes along, some more proofs of yours truly, taken down by the sounding sea. Also one

of the young woman who sometimes accompanies me in my far from conventional rambles. Last Sunday, threatening rain, we wandered off into the hills, cooked our dinner (broiled steak, baked sweet potatoes, coffee, etc., crab, French bread, and a patty of dairy butter), and were a couple of gipsies. To-morrow we may jump on our wheels and ride off forty or fifty miles. And yesterday we may have taken in the opera and dined fashionably. Never the same, except the camera, which same I am slowly mastering.

Yes; I read 'A New Magdalen' when I was about twelve, and then shocked a very nice young lady by starting to discuss it with her."

"When England is so decadent as to lose her colonies, then England falls. When England falls the United States will be shaken to its foundations, and the chances are one hundred to one that it ever recovers again. Why, England is our greatest purchaser, and our greatest maker of markets, and the only nation which is not deep down hostile to us. Germany, France, Austria and Russia can supply the world with all that the world needs, if they could only get a chance by having England and the United States eliminated from the proposition. And once one were eliminated the ruin of the other were easy. But England is not going to fall. It is not possible. To court such a possibility is to court destruction for the English speaking people. We are the salt of the earth, and it is because we have it in us to frankly say so that we really are so. No hemming or hawing; we state the bald fact. It is for the world to take or leave. Take it may, but it shall always leave us. . . .

" . . . So? Why, the United States never had but one fight in its history; that was when it fought with itself. England never bothered her. Read up history and you will find that England's hands were full of other things, and preferring other matters, she let the colonies slip away. Do you really think we whipped the whole of England in the Revolution? Or in 1812, when her hands were full with Napoleon, and she was fighting in every quarter of the globe? Mexico was play. But the civil war was a war, a

death grapple. And all hail to the South for the fight it put up against stiff odds.

"You little know Canada. Why don't those other European countries, standing by themselves, fall? Because, they are but ostensibly alone. In reality they stand together—whenever it comes to bucking the Anglo-Saxon.

"If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, come cash."

"Dec. 5, 1899.
"Dear Cloudesley:—

"First letter-writing I have done for quite a while. . . . Have not had an evening at home for nigh on to two weeks, what with suppers, speaking, functions, and last but not least, FOOTBALL. Did you see what we did to Stanford? In case that benighted region in which you reside has not yet received the score, let me have the privilege of blazoning it forth. Thirty to nothing, Berkeley.

"It was magnificent, to sit under the blue and gold and see the Berkeley giants wade through the Cardinals, and especially so when one looks back to the times he sat and watched the Stanfordites pile up the score and hammer our line into jelly. Do you care for football? In case you do not, I shall not permit my enthusiasm to bore you further.

". . . Heaven save us from our friends! Last Sunday evening I spoke before the San Francisco Section. Unknown to me, and on the strength of divers newspaper puffs which recently have appeared, they posted San Francisco, and also perpetrated the enclosed hand bill. I knew nothing about it till just the moment before I was to go on the platform. Can I sue them for libel? [I find the hand bill in Jack's scrapbook for 1899-1900, advertising his name in blatant type, "The Distinguished Magazine Writer," a lecture in Union Square Hall, 421 Post Street, Sunday Ev'g, Dec. 3rd, 1899.]

". . . Your criticism of my 'Editor' article is exactly my own criticism. We could not disagree on that if we tried. By the way, there were 1750 words in it. The 'Editor' was billed to pay liber-

ally, and they told me on acceptance, promptly. It was published last October, I received for it five dollars which came to hand day before yesterday.

"0 Lord! Good-by."

"Dec. 12, 1899.
"Dear Cloudesley:—

". . . You mistake, I do not believe in the universal brotherhood of man. I think I have said so before. I believe my race is the salt of the earth. I am a scientific socialist, not a Utopian, an economic man as opposed to an imaginative man. The latter is becoming an anachronism.

"Nay, nay, bankruptcy is not an ideal state, at least for me. It's too horrible for words. Give me the millions and I'll take the responsibilities.

"Later on I shall forward you an article of mine on the 'Question of the Maximum,' which contains within it, though not the main theme, the economic basis for imperialism or expansion. This, I know, is directly opposed to the current ethics. But it is the one which will dominate the current ethics."