very night a big fire broke out in a crowded apartment house. It was not
in Carl's "beat," but he decided to cover it anyhow. Along with the
firemen, he managed to get upon the roof; he jumped here, he flew there,
demolishing the only suit of clothes he owned. But what an account he
handed in! The editor discarded entirely the story of the reporter sent
to cover the fire, ran in Carl's, word for word, and raised him to
twelve dollars a week.

But just as the crown of reportorial success was lighting on his brow,
his mother made it plain to him that she preferred to have him return to
college. He bought a ticket to Vacaville,--it was just about Christmas
time,--purchased a loaf of bread and a can of sardines, and with thirty
cents in his pocket, the extent of his worldly wealth, he left for
California, traveling in a day coach all the way. I remember his story
of how, about the end of the second day of bread and sardines, he
cold-bloodedly and with aforethought cultivated a man opposite him, who
looked as if he could afford to eat; and how the man "came through" and
asked Carl if he would have dinner with him in the diner. To hear him
tell what and how much he ordered, and of the expression and depression
of the paying host! It tided him over until he reached home,
anyhow--never mind the host.

All his mining experience, plus the dark side of life, as contrasted
with society as he saw them both in Spokane, turned his interest to the
field of economics. And when he entered college the next spring, it was
to "major" in that subject.

May and June, 1903, he worked underground in the coal-mines of Nanaimo.
In July he met Nay Moran in Idaho for his second Idaho camping-trip; and
it was on his return from this outing that I met him, and ate his jerked