unpublished in book form, while most of them were written primarily for
boys and girls, I do not hesitate to include as appropriate a tale such
as "Whose Business Is to Live."

Number two of the present group, "Typhoon Off the Coast of Japan," is
the first story ever written by Jack London for publication. At the age
of seventeen he had returned from his deep-water voyage in the sealing
schooner _Sophie Sutherland_, and was working thirteen hours a day
for forty dollars a month in an Oakland, California, jute mill. The
_San Francisco Call_ offered a prize of twenty-five dollars for the
best written descriptive article. Jack's mother, Flora London,
remembering that I had excelled in his school "compositions," urged him
to enter the contest by recalling some happening of his travels. Grammar
school, years earlier, had been his sole disciplined education. But his
wide reading, worldly experience, and extraordinary powers of
observation and correlation, enabled him to command first prize. It is
notable that the second and third awards went to students at California
and Stanford universities.

Jack never took the trouble to hunt up that old _San Francisco
Call_ of November 12, 1893; but when I came to write his biography,
"The Book of Jack London," I unearthed the issue, and the tale appears
intact in my English edition, published in 1921. And now, gathering
material for what will be the final Jack London collections, I cannot
but think that his first printed story will have unusual interest for
his readers of all ages.

The boy Jack's unexpected success in that virgin venture naturally
spurred him to further effort. It was, for one thing, the pleasantest
way he had ever earned so much money, even if it lacked the element of