young lives and mine together; things that happened to us in the morning of life, in the blossom of our youth, in the good days, the dear days, "the days when we went gipsying, a long time ago." Most of them creditable to me, too. One child to whom I paid court when she was five years old and I eight still lives in Hannibal, and she visited me last summer, traversing the necessary ten or twelve hundred miles of railroad without damage to her patience or to her oldyoung vigor. Another little lassie to whom I paid attention in Hannibal when she was nine years old and I the same, is still alive-in London-and hale and hearty, just as I am. And on the few surviving steamboats-those lingering ghosts and remembrancers of great fleets that plied the big river in the beginning of my water-career-which is exactly as long ago as the whole invoice of the life-years of Shakespeare number -there are still findable two or three river-pilots who saw me do creditable things in those ancient days; and several white-headed engineers; and several roustabouts and mates; and several deckhands who used to heave the lead for me and send up on the still night air the "six feet scant!" that made me shudder, and the "M-a-r-k-twain!" that took the shudder away, and presently the darling "By the d-e-e-p-four!" that lifted me to heaven for joy.' They know about me, and can tell. And so do printers, from St. Louis to New York; and so do newspaper reporters, from Nevada to San Francisco. And so do the police. If Shakespeare had really been good argument celebrated, like me, Stratford could have if it convinces told things about him; and if my experience goes for anything, they'd have done it. # 1 1 Four fathoms-twenty-four feet. VII I had under my superintendence a controversy appointed to decide whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare or not, I believe I would place before the debaters only the one question, Was Shakespeare ever a practicing lawyer? and leave everything else out. It is maintained that the man who wrote the plays was not merely myriadminded, but also myriad-accomplished: that he not only knew some thousands of things about human life in all its shades and grades, and about the hundred arts and trades and crafts and professions which men busy themselves in, but that he could talk about the men and their grades and trades accurately, making no mistakes. Maybe it is so, but have the experts spoken, or is it only Tom, Dick, and Harry? Does the exhibit stand upon wide, and loose, and eloquent generalizing-which is not evidence, and not proof-or upon details, particulars, statistics, illustrations, demonstrations? Experts of unchallengeable authority have testified definitely as to only one of Shakespeare's multifarious craftequipments, so far as my recollections of Shakespeare-Bacon talk abide with me his law-equipment. I do not remember that Wellington or Napoleon petitio ever examined Shakespeare's battles and sieges and strategies, and then decided and established for good and all, that they were militarily flawless; I do not remember that any Nelson, or Drake or Cook ever examined his seamanship and said it showed profound and accurate principii familiarity with that art; I don't remember that any king or prince or duke has ever testified that Shakespeare was letter-perfect in his handling of royal court-manners and the talk and manners of aristocracies; I don't remember that he was a dramatist any illustrious Latinist or Grecian or not supposed to Frenchman or Spaniard or Italian has be a seaman Ete. proclaimed him a past-master in those languages; I don't remember-well, I don't remember that there is testimony -great testimony-imposing testimony -unanswerable and unattackable testimony as to any of Shakespeare's hundred specialties, except one-the law. Other things change, with time, and the student cannot trace back with certainty the changes that various trades and their processes and technicalities have undergone in the long stretch of a century or two and find out what their processes and technicalities were in those |