university boys. They went to the same university that she did, were in
her class socially, could know her, could see her every day if they
wanted to. He wondered that they did not want to, that they had been out
having a good time instead of being with her that evening, talking with
her, sitting around her in a worshipful and adoring circle. His thoughts
wandered on. He noticed one with narrow-slitted eyes and a loose-lipped
mouth. That fellow was vicious, he decided. On shipboard he would be a
sneak, a whiner, a tattler. He, Martin Eden, was a better man than that
fellow. The thought cheered him. It seemed to draw him nearer to Her.
He began comparing himself with the students. He grew conscious of the
muscled mechanism of his body and felt confident that he was physically
their master. But their heads were filled with knowledge that enabled
them to talk her talk,--the thought depressed him. But what was a brain
for? he demanded passionately. What they had done, he could do. They
had been studying about life from the books while he had been busy living
life. His brain was just as full of knowledge as theirs, though it was a
different kind of knowledge. How many of them could tie a lanyard knot,
or take a wheel or a lookout? His life spread out before him in a series
of pictures of danger and daring, hardship and toil. He remembered his
failures and scrapes in the process of learning. He was that much to the
good, anyway. Later on they would have to begin living life and going
through the mill as he had gone. Very well. While they were busy with
that, he could be learning the other side of life from the books.

As the car crossed the zone of scattered dwellings that separated Oakland
from Berkeley, he kept a lookout for a familiar, two-story building along
the front of which ran the proud sign, HIGGINBOTHAM'S CASH STORE. Martin
Eden got off at this corner. He stared up for a moment at the sign. It
carried a message to him beyond its mere wording. A personality of
smallness and egotism and petty underhandedness seemed to emanate from