The fact that the Examiner of that morning had failed to publish his treasure-hunting article did not dash his spirits.

He was at too great a height for that, and having been deaf to a twice-repeated summons, he went without the heavy Sunday dinner with which Mr.
Higginbotham invariably graced his table.

To Mr.Higginbotham such a dinner was advertisement of his worldly achievement and prosperity, and he honored it by delivering platitudinous sermonettes upon American institutions and the opportunity said institutions gave to any hard-working man to rise--the rise, in his case, which he pointed out unfailingly, being from a grocer's clerk to the ownership of Higginbotham's Cash Store.
Martin Eden looked with a sigh at his unfinished "Pearl-diving" on Monday morning, and took the car down to Oakland to the high school.

And when, days later, he applied for the results of his examinations, he learned that he had failed in everything save grammar.
"Your grammar is excellent," Professor Hilton informed him, staring at him through heavy spectacles; "but you know nothing, positively nothing, in the other branches, and your United States history is abominable--there is no other word for it, abominable.

I should advise you--" Professor Hilton paused and glared at him, unsympathetic and unimaginative as one of his own test-tubes.