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15 / Albert J. Houston Possessed of funds ample enough to dress like a fashionable boulevardier, increas­ ingly successful as a writer of both serious and more whimsical works, a favorite with not only his fellow Fijis but also students generally, liked by many professors even when he did not fare well in some of their courses, Norris cut a broad swath at the University of California, but the popu­ larity he enjoyed did not prevent his taking a typically generous interest in an innocent and impecunious sixteen-­ year-­ old from north­ ern California by way of St. Louis. When Albert Joshua Houston (1874–1951) was elected to Phi Gamma Delta, Norris promptly took him under his wing as his roommate in the chapter house, succeeding Seymour Waterhouse in that capacity. Following his mentor’s lead, Hous­ton quickly proceeded to leave his own mark at Berke­ ley, involving himself in a variety of campus activities and endeavors, which culminated in his being named editor of the 1895 Blue and Gold, making full use of Norris’s talents as an illustrator for that volume. After his graduation that same year, Houston remained in the Bay Area as a student at Cooper Medical College in San Francisco, from which he was graduated in 1898, the first step in an eminent career as an ear, nose, and throat specialist. Their clearly divergent interests did not, however, seriously undermine the friendship Houston and Norris continued to maintain. Norris secured Hous­ ton a short-­lived position with The Wave, commented on his marital prospects in a letter to Eleanor M. Davenport (Crisler 1986, 45), dedicated A Man’s Woman to him, thereby recognizing the medical expertise Houston had supplied for that novel, and then inscribed a copy of it the day after its publication to “my best man friend—in remembrance of our common college days and the Fiji Fraternity and in token of my earnest affection and admiration” (Crisler 1986, 219). For his part, Houston visited Norris and Jeannette at their new home in Roselle, New Jersey, and in later years unstintingly acknowledged Norris’s hand in shaping a raw and inexperienced freshman. Source: Albert J. Houston. Excerpts from unpublished autobiography, BANC MSS C-­ D 5067, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berke­ ley. 68 / Frank Norris Remembered [. . .] Before the end of my freshman year I was asked to live at the fraternity house and when they understood the reason I could not, they arranged for me to be house manager. My duties were to collect the board, buy the supplies, hire the help, arrange the menus, etc., in return for which I would get my board and room. As a result, from the beginning of my sophomore year I lived at the fraternity house. There was quite a lot of work involved in keeping the books and managing the affairs of the house. An expenditure had to be kept with the limit of about $30 a month for board & room. It took an especially stout heart when they allbegantokickatonceabouthavingcornstarchpuddingfivetimesaweek. Frank Norris, who was my room mate, was one of the loudest in his complaints as he had a particular aversion to anything “gooey.” As a result, with the type of humor prevalent with healthy boys, they placed a dish of it in his bed one night so arranged that when he crawled in he would plant his foot right into it. This naturally started a war of reprisal. Frank, thinking that Seymour Waterhouse had done it, carefully put a pint of honey between Waterhouse’s sheets the next night. Waterhouse who had not been a party to the origi­nal crime was so incensed that he left the house and sought board elsewhere. He later returned, much to our sorrow , for he came home with a bad habit, smoking five cent cigars. The brand was known as “Knapsack” but we called it Snap back, and the stench was so terrible that we finally had to clear out a storage room on the first floor for his personal use.44 Many of us smoked—mostly pipes, with an occasional cigarette hand rolled of Bull Durham. Although it is a very fragrant, if cheap tobacco, it was unanimously conceded that those five cent cigars were too much for us. Living with Frank Norris was one of the most interesting experiences of my life. Frank had just returned from two or three years’ study in Paris where he had studied art in Julian Atelier. He was, therefore...

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