Then came a college course at the University of Michigan, with vacations spent in cruising about the Great Lakes in a twenty-eight-foot cutter sloop. After graduation he worked for a time in a packing house, then hearing of the discovery of gold in the Black Hills, he set off with the other gold-diggers. He did not find a mine, but the experience gave him a background for two later novels, _The Claim Jumpers_, and _The Westerners_. He went east for a year of graduate study at Columbia University. Like many other students, he found a friend in Professor Brander Matthews, who encouraged him to write of some of his western experiences. He sold a few short stories to magazines, and his first novel, _The Claim Jumpers_ was accepted by Appleton's. _The Westerners_, his next book, brought him $500 for the serial rights, and with its publication he definitely determined upon making authorship his calling. But it was not authorship in a study. _The Blazed Trail_ was written in a lumber camp in midwinter. He got up at four o'clock, wrote until eight, then put on his snowshoes and went out for a day's work. When the story was finished he gave it to the foreman of the camp to read. The man began it after supper, and when White got up next morning at four, he found him still reading, so he felt that the book would succeed. Another year he made a trip to the Hudson Bay country, and on his return wrote _Conjurer's House_. This was dramatized by George Broadhurst, and was very successful on the stage. With Thomas Fogarty, the artist, he made a long canoe trip, and the resulting book, _The Forest_, was illustrated by Mr. Fogarty. A camping trip in the Sierra Mountains of California was followed by the writing of _The Mountains_. His next book, _The Mystery_, was written jointly by Mr. White and Samuel Hopkins Adams. When it was finished they not only divided the proceeds but divided the characters for future stories, White taking Handy Solomon, whom he used again in _Arizona Nights_, and Darrow, who appeared in _The Sign at Six_. Then without warning, Mr. White went to Africa. His explanation was simple: I went because I wanted to. About once in so often the wheels get rusty and I have to get up and do something real or else blow up. Africa seemed to me a pretty real thing. Let me add that I did not go for material. I never go anywhere for material; if I did I should not get it. That attitude of mine would give me merely externals, which are not worth writing about. I go places merely because for one reason or another they attract me. Then if it happens that I get close enough to the life, I may later find that I have something to write about. A man rarely writes anything convincing unless he has lived the life; not with his critical faculty alert, but whole-heartedly and because, for the time being, it is his life.