JACK LONDON (1876–1916)

Few lives of American authors have been so filled with picturesque and paradoxical elements as the life of Jack London. Born in California, the son of a restless race of American pioneers and adventurers, he spent his early years in poverty and isolation upon various small ranches in his native State. Later, in Oakland, he was newsboy and street gamin, then member of a lawless gang of harbor outlaws. At seventeen he had become, in his own words, a drunken bum.' A voyage on the Pacific with wild adventures among the seal herds had a sobering effect upon him, and, returning to San Francisco, he made feverish attempts at self-education. Then came a tour of America as a tramp, and in 1897 an excited rush to the new gold fields of the Klondike. In his later years he toured the Pacific in his own boat and finally settled upon a ranch in the California valley which figures in his last fiction as The Valley of the Moon.

His advent as an author was Bret IIarte-like in its sensational suddenness. In 1900 appeared in the Overland Monthly The Son of the Wolf' and other vivid tales of the Klondike gold regions, soon to be issued in a volume as successful as Harte's Luck of Roaring Camp. The Call of the Wild in 1903 established his fame. From that time until his death he continued to pour out an amazing amount of material, the greater part of it short stories and novels. In sixteen years he wrote what is now published in fifty-one volumes, not to mention a large amount of uncollected newspaper material. His influence upon his period was considerable. He was the leader of the later school of fiction writers who depend for their effects upon vigor of treatment, upon impressionistic and unusual backgrounds and characters, and upon first-hand knowledge on the part of the writer.

THE NIGHT-BORN 1

5

It was in the old Alta-Inyo Club - a warm night for San Francisco- and through the open windows, hushed and far, came the brawl of the streets. The talk had led on from the Graft Prosecution and the latest signs that the town was to be run wide open, down through all the grotesque sordidness and rotten- 10 ness of man-hate and man-meanness, until the name of O'Brien was mentionedO'Brien, the promising young pugilist who had been killed in the prize-ring the night before. At once the air had seemed 15 to freshen. O'Brien had been a cleanliving young man with ideals. He neither drank, smoked, nor swore, and his had been the body of a beautiful young god. He had even carried his prayer-book to 20 the ringside. They found it in his coat pocket in the dressing-room . . . afterward.

der for men to conjure with . . . after it has been lost to them and they have turned middle-aged. And so well did we conjure, that Romance came and for an hour led us far from the man-city and its snarling roar. Bardwell, in a way, started it by quoting from Thoreau; but it was old Trefethan, bald-headed and dewlapped, who took up the quotation and for the hour to come was Romance incarnate. At first we might have wondered how many Scotches he had consumed since dinner, but very soon all that was forgotten.

'It was in 1898-I was thirty-five then,' he said. Yes, I know you are adding it up. You're right. I'm forty-even now; look ten years more; and the doctors say-damn the doctors anyway!'

He lifted the long glass to his lips and sipped it slowly to soothe away his irritation.

'But I was young. . . once. I was young twelve years ago, and I had hair

Here was Youth, clean and wholesome, unsullied the thing of glory and won- 25 on top of my head, and my stomach was

1 Copyright by the Century Co.

lean as a runner's, and the longest day was none too long for me. I was a husky