 a little thing that would have
puzzled the world had it known. But the world would have puzzled over his
bepuzzlement rather than over the little thing that to him loomed gigantic.
Judge Blount invited him to dinner. That was the little thing, or the beginning
of the little thing, that was soon to become the big thing. He had insulted
Judge Blount, treated him abominably, and Judge Blount, meeting him on the
street, invited him to dinner. Martin bethought himself of the numerous
occasions on which he had met Judge Blount at the Morses' and when Judge Blount
had not invited him to dinner. Why had he not invited him to dinner then? he
asked himself. He had not changed. He was the same Martin Eden. What made the
difference? The fact that the stuff he had written had appeared inside the
covers of books? But it was work performed. It was not something he had done
since. It was achievement accomplished at the very time Judge Blount was sharing
this general view and sneering at his Spencer and his intellect. Therefore it
was not for any real value, but for a purely fictitious value that Judge Blount
invited him to dinner.
    Martin grinned and accepted the invitation, marvelling the while at his
complacence. And at the dinner, where, with their womenkind, were half a dozen
of those that sat in high places, and where Martin found himself quite the lion,
Judge Blount, warmly seconded by Judge Hanwell, urged privately that Martin
should permit his name to be put up for the Styx - the ultra-select club to
which belonged, not the mere men of wealth, but the men of attainment. And
Martin declined, and was more puzzled than ever.
    He was kept busy disposing of his heap of manuscripts. He was overwhelmed by
requests from editors. It had been discovered that he was a stylist, with meat
under his style. The Northern Review, after publishing »The Cradle of Beauty,«
had written him for half a dozen similar essays, which would have been supplied
out of the heap, had not Burton's Magazine, in a speculative mood, offered him
five hundred dollars each for five essays. He wrote back that he would supply
the demand, but at a thousand dollars an essay. He remembered that all these
manuscripts had been refused by the very magazines that were now clamoring for
them. And their refusals had been cold-blooded, automatic, stereotyped. They had
made him sweat, and now he intended to make them sweat. Burton's Magazine paid
his price for five essays, and the
