Martin Eden

Chapter XXVIII

But success had lost Martin's address, and her messengers no longer

came to his door. For twenty-five days, working Sundays and

holidays, he toiled on "The Shame of the Sun," a long essay of some

thirty thousand words. It was a deliberate attack on the mysticism

of the Maeterlinck school - an attack from the citadel of positive

science upon the wonder-dreamers, but an attack nevertheless that

retained much of beauty and wonder of the sort compatible with

ascertained fact. It was a little later that he followed up the

attack with two short essays, "The Wonder-Dreamers" and "The

Yardstick of the Ego." And on essays, long and short, he began to

pay the travelling expenses from magazine to magazine.

During the twenty-five days spent on "The Shame of the Sun," he

sold hack-work