the plain inference, therefore is, that that is what it did. Since all these manifold things could have occurred, we have every right to believe they did occur. These patiently and painstakingly accumulated vast acquirements and competences needed but one thing moreopportunity to convert themselves into triumphant action. The opportunity came, we have the result; beyond shadow of question the mouse is in the kitten.

It is proper to remark that when we of the three cults plant a "We think we

may assume, we expect it, under careful watering and fertilizing and tending, to grow up into a strong and hardy and weather-defying "there isn't a shadow of a doubt" at last-and it usually happens.

We know what the Baconian's verdict would be: "There is not a rag of evidence that the kitten has had any training, any education, any experience qualifying it for

the present occasion, or is indeed equipped
for any achievement above lifting such un-
claimed milk as comes its way; but there
is abundant evidence-unassailable proof,
in fact that the other animal is epuipped,
to the last detail, with every qualification
necessary for the event. Without shadow
of doubt the tomcat contains the mouse."

use of analogy to illustrate his point

reduces other's argument to one of sheer, errant nonsense. analogy seems calid, but analogy can't prove a

thing

only illustrate.

VI

HEN Shakespeare died, in 1616,

WHE

great literary productions attributed to him as author had been before the London world and in high favor for twenty-four years. Yet his death was not an event. It made no stir, it attracted no attention. Apparently his eminent literary contemporaries did not realize that a celebrated poet had passed from their midst. Perhaps they knew a play-actor of minor rank had disappeared, but did not regard him as the author of his Works. “We are justified in assuming" this.

His death was not even an event in the little town of Stratford. Does this mean

that in Stratford he was not regarded as a celebrity of any kind?

"We are privileged to assume"-no, we are indeed obliged to assume that such was the case. He had spent the first twenty-two or twenty-three years of his life there, and of course knew everybody and was known by everybody of that day in the town, including the dogs and the cats and the horses. He had spent the last five or six years of his life there, diligently trading in every big and little thing that had money in it; so we are compelled to assume that many of the folk there in those said latter days knew him personally, and the rest by sight and hearsay. But not as a celebrity? Apparently not. For everybody soon forgot to remember any contact with him or any incident connected with him. The dozens of townspeople, still alive, who had known of him or known

about him in the first twenty-three years of his life were in the same unremembering condition: if they knew of any incident connected with that period of his life they didn't tell about it. Would they if they had been asked? It is most likely. Were they asked? It is pretty apparent that they were not. Why weren't they? It is a very plausible guess that nobody there or elsewhere was interested to know.

For seven years after Shakespeare's death nobody seems to have been interested in him. Then the quarto was published, and Ben Jonson awoke out of his long indifference and sang a song of praise and put it in the front of the book. Then silence fell again.

For sixty years. Then inquiries into Shakespeare's Stratford life began to be made, of Stratfordians. Of Stratfordians who had known Shakespeare or had seen