“But,” Ruth had objected, “there are the topics of general interest to all.”

“There, you mistake,” he had rushed on.  “All persons in society, all cliques in society—­or, rather, nearly all persons and cliques—­ape their betters.  Now, who are the best betters?  The idlers, the wealthy idlers.  They do not know, as a rule, the things known by the persons who are doing something in the world.  To listen to conversation about such things would mean to be bored, wherefore the idlers decree that such things are shop and must not be talked about.  Likewise they decree the things that are not shop and which may be talked about, and those things are the latest operas, latest novels, cards, billiards, cocktails, automobiles, horse shows, trout fishing, tuna-fishing, big-game shooting, yacht sailing, and so forth—­and mark you, these are the things the idlers know.  In all truth, they constitute the shop-talk of the idlers.  And the funniest part of it is that many of the clever people, and all the would-be clever people, allow the idlers so to impose upon them.  As for me, I want the best a man’s got in him, call it shop vulgarity or anything you please.”

And Ruth had not understood.  This attack of his on the established had seemed to her just so much wilfulness of opinion.

So Martin contaminated Professor Caldwell with his own earnestness, challenging him to speak his mind.  As Ruth paused beside them she heard Martin saying:-

“You surely don’t pronounce such heresies in the University of California?”

Professor Caldwell shrugged his shoulders.  “The honest taxpayer and the politician, you know.  Sacramento gives us our appropriations and therefore we kowtow to Sacramento, and to the Board of Regents, and to the party press, or to the press of both parties.”

“Yes, that’s clear; but how about you?” Martin urged.  “You must be a fish out of the water.”

“Few like me, I imagine, in the university pond.  Sometimes I am fairly sure I am out of water, and that I should belong in Paris, in Grub Street, in a hermit’s cave, or in some sadly wild Bohemian crowd, drinking claret,—­dago-red they call it in San Francisco,—­dining in cheap restaurants in the Latin Quarter, and expressing vociferously radical views upon all creation.  Really, I am frequently almost sure that I was cut out to be a radical.  But then, there are so many questions on which I am not sure.  I grow timid when I am face to face with my human frailty, which ever prevents me from grasping all the factors in any problem—­human, vital problems, you know.”

And as he talked on, Martin became aware that to his own lips had come the “Song of the Trade Wind":-

   “I am strongest at noon,
   But under the moon
   I stiffen the bunt of the sail.”