1914

FOR us, ending one year and beginning another aboard ship was the acme of good fortune. The holidays, spent partly ashore while the cook remained to guard the Roamer where she lay moored to one city wharf or another, were full of cheer. The "Porchclimber" episode settled, our future looked brighter, though Jack remarked more than once: "I'm riding to a fall, financially; but I'm not worrying—you've never yet seen me stay down long. I'll work harder than ever!"

Our New Year was ushered in at the Saddle Rock restaurant. Two nights before Christmas, with a big southeaster blowing, Jack and Nakata got me into an evening gown aboard the yacht where she rolled at Lombard Street wharf in San Francisco, then rowed me to a float, from which we mounted to water-front street and taxi, to attend the house-warming of friends uptown. In the early hours we were back, and casting off, on the way to Sausalito. A terrific ebb was running, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief when he had his vessel safely clear of the docks and speeding on the ebb, before the gale, under a little shred of a reefed jigger. When, not far from Sausalito, we ran into the great run-out that tears down through Raccoon Straits to the Golden Gate, it seemed as if the tiny yawl could not possibly make it across. Jack, in his most congenial element, was on the pinnacle of exhilaration. And in fifty-five minutes the thirty-foot craft, under that rag of canvas, had made a

passage that regularly takes the huge screw-ferryboats thirty-five.

Threading his way among the tossing sloops and schooners and motor boats at anchor off the yacht clubs at Sausalito, Jack navigated over the mud flats, well on the way into Mill Valley, where in the falling tide he laid the Roamer in the mud and went to sleep for the afternoon, upon his lips the contented murmur, "This is the Life! We've got all others skinned to death, Mate!" The next day, Christmas, Nakata rowed us to a railroad station on the shore, and we dined with friends in Mill Valley. And on the 26th we were cruising once more.

While lying off Point Richmond, Jack developed an earache, and with bandaged head called upon a doctor. In no time the dailies came out with an exciting story of how, in a blow, Jack London had been knocked senseless by the mainboom, while his wife bravely and cleverly brought the vessel to safe anchorage! Jack was aggrieved out of all apparent proportion to the matter; but the reason was that he so especially prided himself upon never having unseamanlike accidents.

He became interested in Richmond real estate to the extent of buying a lot, thereby branding himself as a "booster" for the new harbor subdivision of the Ellis Landing and Dock Company.

Just as we began congratulating ourselves that certain hindrances had been overridden, and upon the general outlook for the New Year, fresh trouble broke that necessitated Jack's jumping out for New York within twenty-four hours, leaving the yacht at San Rafael, where the ill news had found us looking over ground familiar to our childhood. There was much I must attend to at home owing to the suddenness of his departure, and so our first long separation took place.

"While I'm straightening out this snarl, I can be looking into other details that need attention, such as advances

from the publishers," Jack reminded me. "I'll be having good news for you soon, I hope." He often arranged for advances, either in bulk, or in monthly payments, upon contemplated work.

The "snarl," which took him over a month to smooth out, was with reference to dramatic rights in one of his novels. An old friend had held these rights for some years without having made a successful showing. Moving pictures had never been considered in the days Jack had signed contracts for speaking performances, and there were men who tried to befog the issue; hence it behooved Jack, now interested in cinema productions, to clear his way of misunderstanding.

But his friend had entered into a dramatic contract for a production of the novel in question, and borrowed money against future box office receipts, which later did not appear to be imminent. The agent was willing to release the playwright, but to the tune of forty thousand dollars. Jack, appalled by the ridiculous sum, bent all his powers to beat down the "robber." It took him four weeks, and in the end he resorted to what he called his "play acting" to bring about the signing of a "decent" release of the rights. Early in the combat, I would have this sort of message: "Outlook dark," or "Situation ticklish," or "Nothing good to write." But his old unnatural condition when in New York seemed to be absent.

"To hell with New York," he wrote in the midst of this and other difficulties that beset. "I am here to master this Babylon and its sad cave-dwellers, not to be mastered!"

Later: "Hereafter, either before or after Roamer winter trip, my impression is that you and I will spend a month in New York."

One night in a triple collision of taxicabs, he came near losing his life. A certain manager of burlesque had taken him to the playhouse, and afterward introduced him to the leading lights, three of whom the two men undertook

to escort to their homes. When the cars crashed Jack found himself at the bottom of the heap of kindling-wood that had been his cab, his mouth full of glass, and with a sense of suffocation, since the other four passengers contributed to the weight. Aside from minor cuts and bruises, the party escaped uninjured, and in some way avoided revealing their identity, so that the newspaper clippings Jack sent lacked all names. The theatrical man longed to have the event featured with "scare-head" lines, for the advertisement of his star, but Jack would have none of it.

"I'd have looked well," he grumbled to me, "with the report flashed all over the country that I'd been 'joy-riding' with a bunch af actresses!——I've never been joy-riding in my life," he teased; but I'm going some time, for I'll never be satisfied until I come home to you with a pink-satin slipper in my pocket!"

Whatever else Jack London did or did not do in New York City, he always spent much time upon the theatres. About this time he enthusiastically applauded the idea of the Little Theatre, and hoped that San Francisco would take up the idea. Some time before the breaking of the Great War, friends were promulgating a widely ramified plan for a new opera house and conservatory in San Francisco, and Jack made regular contributions to the promoters. So far, nothing has come of it.

Having succeeded in obtaining a "decent" release of the dramatic rights in his book, and made some very satisfactory agreements for New York, he wired: "General future never looked brighter."

A word as to the "play-acting" which caused the "robber" to throw up his hands, or, rather put his hand to the signing of the "decent release." Jack, partly as a whim, partly in order to compose undisturbed, had hidden himself in a notorious hostelry of the "theatrical tenderloin." When he had telephoned to his publisher to send his money, that person cried out, "Great Scott, man! What

are you doing in a house like that! I'll have to bring it myself!"

Jack decided to inveigle the enemy into his room. He endeavored to turn the tables, but Jack, pleading indisposition, also that he was too rushed to come out, since he must leave for California sooner than he had planned, contrived to gain the other s consent to call at an early forenoon hour. He then prepared the stage and made up for the impish part he intended to play:

"You should have seen me," he giggled, "I was a sight to throw the fear of God into any highwayman of his feather. I had sized him up, you see.

"For two days I purposely let my beard grow, and you know how black it comes out. I opened my pajama-coat so that the mat of hair showed on my chest. And of course I left out my upper teeth, mussed up my head and wore an eyeshade. I was not pretty.

"So, when the clerk 'phoned up that he was below, I said, 'Send him right up.' He answered, 'he's stepped outside.' Outside,' says I, 'what for?' I don't know he said he'd wait for you there. Tell him, I ordered, That I'm in bed, and can't come down."

"Well, when his tap came, I sat up in bed, and the high-arm chair I had placed for him had its back to the door so that if he tried to escape me he'd be in an awkward position getting out of his chair to do it.——It sounds awful, I can see from your face, Mate, Jack interpolated. "But remember, I had wrestled for weeks with him. He had even agreed to my figures and terms, and promised to send me the release, and then I would wait for days without a word, marking time, when I wanted to go home. It was my sheer whimsey to bring him to his senses in this fantastic way. My God! It was ten thousand times more legitimate than his slimy methods and those of his kind!

"To get back. He came in, trying not to look queer when he saw the object I was—haggard from the dark

growth on my chin and neck, hair showing on my chest, and a ghastly toothless smile of welcome! In his hand was the document, which I took from him and glanced over. And every little while I looked aside to one or the other of my fists, as if gloating over them. As I talked with him without appearing to study him I took in his sick, scared face and soul. He'd have given anything not to have got himself into that chair.

"And then, I went over the whole business again, all we had talked in our many interviews, and he finally consented to release for a tithe of his original claims. He said:

"'I'll go right to my office to make the change, and send you the agreement immediately.'

"I had waited for just that, and didn't mean that he should elude me again. Said I:

"'You'll sign that paper right here on that table, before you leave this room!'—and when he protested, I went on, closing and unclosing my fists, to tell him just exactly what I would do to him if he refused. He looked this way and that, at the telephone, and half around at the door, and knew his situation for precisely what I had made it. He signed the release and left it with me.  . . . And as it is, it will take me months to pay him, month by month.

A little ill news greeted Jack's return—the best young shorthorn bull had broken his neck, and hog cholera had carried off nearly all his blooded hogs.

"I always seem to have to build twice—everything I undertake," Jack said thoughtfully.

In his workroom again, The Little Lady of the Big House was begun, in which were exploited his maturing concepts on farming and stockbreeding. Many readers take for granted that the "Big House" was copied from Jack's Wolf House. As a matter of fact, a picture of Mrs. Phoebe A. Hearst's home at Pleasanton, California, was roughly the

model for that of his hero and heroine on an imaginary ranch in the interior foothills.

Margaret Smith Cobb, a poet of the northern California forest country, whose verse Jack had been the means of placing with eastern magazines, sent me the fragmentary thoughts given below. Jack, to whom I forwarded them, commented: "The poem is most sweet, most beautiful, most true. Tell Margaret Cobb the same, for me. I care not to utter another word on that sad topic."

About this time it was rumored that the Prohibitionists wanted to nominate Jack London for President. He, when asked about it, gave his usual breezy consent: "Sure—I'll run for anything, if it will help, especially if there's no chance of my being elected!"

A grapejuice company was formed for the manufacture, on a large scale, of the incomparable unfermented drink that we were already pressing, from wine grapes, for our own table. Jack was elated over the prospect. It created a new market for his ranch product, and by the same effort furthered the cause of prohibition. He drank regularly of the

clear, natural juice that bore so little resemblance to the commercial article that smacks of stewed fruit.

"Government recipe, my dear, government recipe!" he would gurgle, holding his little glass to the light. "Free advice to every one—and they wonder how I find out these things!"

There was crookedness in the grapejuice company, as there had been in the past year's ventures. Jack, who had no money in this, only his name, was ultimately sued for $41,000; but the case never came to trial.

With travel in his eye, Jack had been plotting to convince an eastern weekly of the value of a series of articles on all the world, and there was talk of having him begin with Japan. I was joyous at the prospect of realizing our old hope to visit those fascinating isles together. But the Mexican fracas in the spring of 1914 came in between and the other articles never were undertaken. Hearst had asked Jack the preceding autumn if he would go to Mexico in case trouble broke. When the time came, there was some disagreement upon the price, and Jack went for Collier's instead. This constituted no infringement of his fiction contract, so long as he delivered the appointed measure of the fiction.

"And now," he said, hopefully, "I may be able to redeem myself as a war correspondent, after what I was held back from doing by the Japanese Army!"

If he had been able to foretell how slim was the chance of attaining his wish, he would not have gone. As it was, Collier's wired to know how long it would take him to make ready to start for Galveston, Texas, should they telegraph him to go. "Twenty-four hours," was the response. Came the bombardment of the Naval Academy at Vera Cruz, and on April 16 the summons arrived. We left Glen Ellen the next morning, and Oakland the same afternoon.

"I'll see you on your way as far as Galveston," ventured

I, taking for granted that Galveston would be the end of my journey.

"You can't get ready in time!" Jack said, but with a bright expectancy that was balm to my apprehension, for I had not been enthusiastic about his going under fire.

"Oh, can't I!" and out came the trunks.

"Well," he paused from his own preparations to gladden my heart, "if you get that far, maybe we can get you to Vera Cruz at least—even if you have to stay there when we go on march to the City of Mexico."

Shortly before leaving, Jack handed me a copy of "The Valley of the Moon," inscribed:

It was at Galveston that Richard Harding Davis in the second instance rendered Jack London a service. Several days had passed, the date of departure with General Frederick Funston was nearing, and all the other correspondents who were to accompany him on the transport Kilpatrick had received their credentials from Washington and were gaily making ready. Jack's alone seemed to be withheld, for Edgar Sisson, editor of Collier's, kept wiring Jack to the effect that he was not to worry—everything would reach him in time.

On the morning of the transports' sailing-date, I was shocked from sleep and upon my feet by a burst of martial music that led a host of men in olive-drab who marched, with brave, ominous sound, along the sea-wall drive. Jack joined me at the window and silently we watched the stream of human life go down to the gulf in ships. Although thrilling to the spectacle, Jack could not forget, and quoted from Le Gallienne's "The Illusion of War":

"'War,
I abhor,
And yet how sweet
The sound along the marching street
Of drum and fife, and I forget
Wet eyes of widows, and forget
Broken old mothers, and the whole
Dark butchery without a soul.'"

As the morning wore, and still no word from Washington, we became genuinely concerned. Before others, Jack preserved a careless demeanor; but when he looked into my eyes I saw in his the baffled, pained expression that he must have worn in childhood.

"I can't understand it, I can't understand it," he puzzled. "Each time I've called on General Funston, his aide has courteously put me off. I know the General is not well, with that abscess in his ear, poor devil; but that isn't the reason. So there seems to be simply nothing I can do."

"I don't care for myself," he would reiterate. "I want to make good to Sisson, whose idea it was for me to go for Collier's. I don't want to throw him down." Presently, having dictated to me his final letters, and sent off his Article I to Collier's, he disappeared downstairs, murmuring:

"'And even my peace-abiding feet
Go marching down the marching street,
For yonder, yonder goes the fife,
And what care I for human life !
And yet tis all unbannered lies,
A dream those little drummers make.'"

An hour passed, and I thought to reconnoitre in the lobby. Emerging from the elevator, my heart leaped to see Jack and the General's aide, Lieutenant Ball, each grasping

the other by both hands, and laughing like schoolboys too pleased for words.

"Why, Mate," Jack explained as we hurried upstairs to put the last touches to his packing, "it's all up to Richard Harding Davis. He came to me and said he wondered if I knew what was going on. You remember that so-called 'Good Soldier' canard that was attributed to me? It has turned up again. As soon as Davis mentioned it, I could see the whole trouble in a flash. We looked up Lieutenant Ball, and—well, you saw us when you came down. Funny how pleased he was to get the thing cleared up!"

At luncheon, our table was near that of the General. He and his aide were consulting earnestly; and after a while the Lieutenant came toward us. Jack rose, and the two returned to the General.

I gave him my word of honor that I did not write a line of that canard," Jack reported to me, "and upon that word he takes the responsibility of adding me to his already filled quota of correspondents. It seems that he had had word from Washington that my going was left up to him, but he, personally, was up in arms about the canard."

Next, a telegram came from Secretary Josephus Daniels that if Jack could not be accommodated on the transport, he should go on one of the convoying destroyers. "And that would be an experience new to me, too," Jack exulted. But a place was shaken down on the Kilpatrick, on which he sailed Friday afternoon. Any regrets that I may have felt at my inability to accompany him were tempered by the fact that I expected to depart twenty-four hours later, and to meet him on the very date of his arrival in Vera Cruz. This was made possible by our good friend Mr. Robert T. Burge, who had proffered me passage on a vessel of the Gulf Coast Steamship Company, of which he was President.

"I'm only too glad to present you with a ticket," he smiled, "but for goodness' sake, don't go. The steamers

are not suitable for ladies' travel. . . . But go if you really must!"

Never shall I forget that evening the little old Atlantis (wrecked the next voyage) approached Vera Cruz. Across the mighty slopes of the storied land, Orizaba towered blue against a sunset sky; and to the south were raised the turrets of the "far-flung battle line" of our own Navy, its smoke mingling with the low tropic clouds. " War, I abhor, and yet—" that has nothing to do, per se, with just valuation of the magnificent machinery invented by brain of man. One of Jack's Mexican articles, in want of real war news, was devoted to what he saw at Tampico's oil-fields. Certain radical contemporaries raged against him, and one, a noted socialist writer, accused him publicly of having been subsidized by the oil interests—subsidized! Jack London! None but a stupid, or at best a warped creature, it would seem to those who knew him, could seriously conceive such a thing.

"Me! subsidized?" Jack stormed, "My worst capitalist enemies have done me the honor to know better than that. Why, no human being has ever dared even to hint subsidization to me, thank God!"

Here again, friend and enemy were like to convict him of paradox. Few could comprehend that universality which made him grasp the whole through all its parts. While decrying war, he could at the same time appreciate the romantic majesty of conquest, hail the bunting of great armadas, respect the courage and deeds of men who battled according to their lights. I have seen him almost weep over the exploits of British admirals and fearless midshipmen of old. "Look!" he would cry, following me with a dusty tome in his hands, "Listen to this, and this . . . this is the sort of stuff that went into the making of you, white woman, and me, and all of us who conquer ourselves and our environment!" In order to preserve a clear view of Jack, it must be held in mind that despite the warm human emotionalism

of him he always came to rest upon his intellectual conceptions.

Achievement, to him, was achievement, though he saw all around and under it. "I take off my hat to it," he would say, whether inspecting the Culebra Cut, or the Harbor of Pago Pago, or the oil fields of Tampico, or the bene ficial organization thrown into Vera Cruz by the army and navy. "If only the whole world could be made so clean and orderly," he said. "If such cleanliness and order could emanate, not from the idea of militarism, but as a social achievement. Let us not wantonly destroy these wonderful machines, these great world assets, that produce efficiently and cheaply. Let us control them. Let us profit by their efficiency and cheapness."

Upton Sinclair, commending upon Jack's detractors, made no mistake:

"He wrote a series of articles that caused certain radicals to turn from him in rage. But I felt certain that the exponent of capitalist efficiency who counted upon Jack London's backing was a child playing in a dynamite factory. . . . If a naval officer took him over a battleship, he would perceive that it was a marvelous and thrilling machine; but let the naval officer not forget that in the quiet hours of the night Jack London's mind would turn to the white-faced stokers, to whom as a guest of an officer he had not been introduced!"

While decrying war, in time of danger Jack said: "Although I am a man of peace, I carry an automatic pistol. I might meet somebody who would not listen to my protestations of friendship and amity. And so with nations —we're a long way from universal disarmament. The most peaceful nation to-day is likely to run up against some other nation that does riot want peace. It would look as if we shall need armies for a weary while to come, to enforce the idea of peace."

He appeared to be surprised at the personnel of the

army and its officers. I must confess that my own general idea of the hard-bitten "regular" underwent a revelation. The rank and file were of a youthful and mostly blond Anglo-Saxon type. I noticed also that Jack was pleased to find many of the officers of both army and navy less "machinely crammed" than he had thought, quite able to stand on their own feet when it came to up-to-date, independent thinking. Jack held that the world would have no more big wars for a long time. "There will be wars, at one time or another," he believed. "You can't change man entirely from the primitive, fighting animal he is. But I do not think we of to-day shall see a big war. The nations are enlightened enough to stop short of that, and arbitrate their differences." I borrow this from The Human Drift:

But his uniformed acquaintances, sitting in the portales of the old Diligencias Hotel, sipping Bacardi rum cocktails, disagreed:

"Germany will start something before a great while—see if she doesn't. And she's dying to get her hands on the United States."

For once, Jack was a poor prophet.

Aside from his old associates of Jap-Russ memories—E. H. Davis, "Jimmy" Hare, "Bobbie" Dunn, Frederick Palmer there were present in Vera Cruz the veteran war artist, Zogbaum, and Reuterdhal, who incidentally made a Collier" cover from a sketch of Jack; J. B. Connolly, whom

we had met in Boston; Burge McFall (Associated Press); John T. McCutcheon; Arthur Ruhl, Vincent Starrett, Stanton Leeds, Oliver Madox Hueffer from London, and Mrs. Dean, the "Widow" of the New York Town Topics. And from Mexico City, Mr. and Mrs. R. H. Murray, representing the New York World. There were others, whose names escape me.

Jack was not the only correspondent who chafed under the restraint imposed upon the army in Mexico; nor did the six weeks in that country strengthen his already weak regard for the Latin American. When the report came that Huerta had slipped out of Puerta Mexico to the south, the whole force was personally in mutinous humor with sitting inactive. Several of the newspapermen broke parole and made their precarious way to the capital, where some of them landed in prison. Jack had declined to go, saying he did not feel it was fair to General Funston. But later on he mitigated the control he had put upon himself, and sailed on the Mexicana for Tampico, the round-trip cover ing a week. He would not hear of my going to share any possible nip-and-tuck hazard. Realizing that I would be in his way, I did not urge, but remained, with Nakata, at the hotel. Jack charged me, in case orders should come for the army to march for Mexico City, to buy him a horse, and have all in readiness for him to go when he should jump back from Tampico. He also had me wait upon the good General, to discover if Nakata, being Japanese, might go along in such event. This the General did not think advisable; so I kept alert for some other man.

"If there is any advice you need, Mate," Jack adjured me, "any help at any time, apply to Richard Harding Davis." Which clinched what he thought of the "white man" who had so staunchly declined to see a brother correspondent labor under disadvantage. Davis died shortly before Jack; and six days before Jack's death, I heard him deliver an impassioned encomium on Davis as a man.

There being no military action about which to write, Jack employed himself turning out articles upon general observations and conditions as he saw them. For recreation, there were horseback rides and drives within the proscribed radius; swims at Los Baños; dinners and luncheons aboard the fleet or with the officers of army and navy ashore; shopping for laces, Mexican blankets, serapes and opals; visits to the little provost court where the natives gaped at a kindly dispensation of justice beyond all their conception; dancing in patios along the portales of the hotels; bull fights—General Funston watched these carefully, and allowed no horses in the ring. Aboard the Solace, the hospital ship, we found the wounded boys reading J. B. Connolly and Jack London, and forgetful of suffering in their pleasure at meeting the authors.

Those broken boys were forerunners of the thousands from all classes, one in pain and purpose, for whom in the hospitals of Europe Jack was to fill so many needs. "There, in hospital," wrote one, "I read Burning Daylight . . . then the doctor sent me to Blighty. There I left Burning Daylight—in the midst of volumes neat and clean and new, damp-stained and broken-backed, I left it . . ." And from our friend Major Harry Strange, at the Front: "I always knew somewhat, and Jack taught me more, and war has quite convinced me, that the only happiness and joy worth while is in service, good, big, noble, brave-hearted service." The Tommies called Jack's books "the Jacklondons"; and one of them, a hot-hearted young Celt, wrote me from Dublin: "I only know that the man who comprehends as he did is always right, and that every one else is wrong." Which voices my own conviction. Again I listen to Jack's appeal: "Be patient with me in the little things; I am really patient in the big ones—I have not winced nor cried aloud." And whereas he might be hasty in little things and little judgments, upon the big issues of mankind and of

his own affairs in relation to mankind, he laid a divining finger that could not touch other than wisely and rightly.

There were visits to San Juan de Ulua, with its spew of filthy, dehumanized prisoners, whom, with their unthinkable dungeons, our navy cleansed and deodorized. Some of these unfortunates had no faintest notion as to what, if any, offense had condemned them to that living burial below sea level. Others recited haltingly the most trivial of incidents that had doomed them to exist for years without standing-room or light.

"Pretty awful, isn't it?—But don't forget, Mate," Jack, who never forgot anything, would point out, "that we ourselves aren't half-civilized yet, in our treatment of convicts. Also, there's such a thing as railroad still existing in the land of the free!"

All this time, busy working and playing in Vera Cruz, waiting while Washington held the army and navy bound in port, Jack, according to rumor in the capitalist press of the United States, was leading a band of insurrectos somewhere in the north of Mexico! Rumor, did I say? The large headlines read:

JACK LONDON LEADS ARMY OF MEXICO REBELS.

That some one was making use of his name, however, seems probable; for later on we heard of persons who had met "Jack London" in Mexico and in Lower California. And an American firm dealing in artist's materials, waited for years for this or another spurious Jack London in Mexico to settle his account.

Whether Jack gathered the bacilli in Tampico, or whether General Maas' blockade that prevented the ingress of fresh food to the occupied town of Vera Cruz, combined with the hotel's filthy kitchen, was responsible, we shall never know. But on May 30, the day set for him to go up in an army aeroplane, instead he went to bed in our lately

bullet-riddled room, with acute bacillary dysentery. Nakata and I took charge of the nursing, under the resident American physician, Dr. A. E. Goodman, in consultation with Major Williams. The latter wanted him to go into army hospital, but Jack seemed to prefer a woman nurse, being myself. Thereafter, every spoonful of water that passed his lips or was used in nursing, was first thoroughly boiled in our room by means of electric appliances, "Thanks to American efficiency," he groaned from his bed; and his food we cooked by the same process.

It was a desperate, cautious campaign against death, but as usual the patient managed by his uncommon recuperative powers to make a spectacular recovery. After a few days he insisted that I take the air with our friends, and upon my accepting dinner invitations in the portales below. "And be sure you don't stint yourself at the lace shops!" he would call after, with indulgent eyes. Or he would turn to greet a decayed Spanish gentleman who tip toed in, who must part with certain ornaments of coral and ancient gold filigree:

"Do you like it, Mate?" he would finger a bracelet or rosary. "If you do, say the word. A woman must have some loot of war, even if her husband has to buy it!"

Nine days after he was stricken, and with pleurisy to boot, he was able to go aboard the cattle transport Ossabaw, bound for Galveston. "If anything breaks in Vera Cruz, which I don't think likely, I can return, he said. "Meantime, me for the Ranch, where I can have white-man's climate and grub!"

"Do you know what are in the long boxes where those soldiers are sitting to play cards?" Jack pointed down to the main deck. And before I could gasp a reply, he finished:

"Those fellows were dead in four days of what I pulled through."

About this time occurred the riots in the hopfields at Wheatland, California, resulting from shocking conditions

and treatment, and for once the high-handed methods of certain detectives had roused the ire of the public. Jack's opinion concerning this u death hole" was sought—indeed, looking over his clipping-books, I notice how frequently he was asked for his opinion upon widely variant subjects. I quote:

Another question upon which Jack's views were solicited was as follows: A grown man in the State of Illinois took advantage of a young girl, and was sentenced to thirty years in the penitentiary. A child being born, the young mother started a movement to free its father so that he might marry her for the sake of the child. Jack's answer to the Newspaper Enterprise Association is below:

No one could be more shaken than Jack, in July, by the beginning of war in Europe. And while he went on unremittingly with writing and ranch, the war was the undercurrent of every thought. More staunchly than ever before he reiterated his faith in England. "England is fighting her first popular war," he would say; and he could not for give Germany, over and above her sworn Frightfulness, for having been stupid enough to think that England would not fight.

But to any proposition bearing upon his presence in France as correspondent, he practically turned a deaf ear, in 1914 and thenceforward until he died.

"Again I say, the Japanese settled the war correspondent forever, by proving him non-essential. Look at Davis and the rest, some of the best in the world," he would indicate as the conflict widened. "Eating out their hearts over there. Not for me. If I went, I would be unable to get what I went after. I have learned my lesson. If I ever do

go to this war, it will be to fight with England and her Allies.  . . . Meantime, I have a lot of mouths to feed, and irons in the fire, and I could not leave with my affairs in their present shape."

Yet I knew that had there been the ghost of an opening for him to see what he wished, he would have managed to go.

He and Collier's corresponded upon the possibility, to find, in the end, that they agreed upon the matter. They wrote him:

"We learned . . . that of the twelve English correspondents chosen to join Sir John French's army not one has as yet been allowed the privilege, and the prospect seems that the thing has been indefinitely postponed.  . . . The precariousness of the whole business of war correspondents at the present time seems to make it rather futile to put first-class men in the field, so to speak, and break their hearts by making it impossible for them to get anywhere of real importance.  . . . We sent you a clipping some days ago which shows that finally all belligerents have decided to do away with correspondents. The result is that we can only get certain casual articles from roving writers of one sort or another with very little or real stuff from the front."

Exasperated with the way he felt the Mexican crisis had been mishandled at Washington, Jack grew more so with the failure of his own country, as time went on, to take a hand in the European crisis. The effect of all this was to stimulate his brain to more thinking, while at the same time he increased his work and plans for work in every direction.

When in June he gave me "The Strength of the Strong," the fly leaf reminded me of that in a book he had sent me the month before our marriage, in which was written: "The red gods call to us. We fling ourselves across the world to meet again and not to part." And here, nine years later, I found:

In the Indian summer we rejoined the Roamer at San Rafael and spent months upon the big bay. The Exposition was rising from the water's edge and many the late afternoon we pulled up our fishing-lines where we lay off Angel Island, and sailed to where we could watch that dream city of domes and minarets in the flood of sunset rose and gold.

On December 8, Jack signed and dated the manuscript of "The Little Lady of the Big House," and began working up notes for the Grove Play, which the Bohemian Club had asked him to prepare for the 1916 High Jinks.

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