he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog. But I ran
over every dog that came along. I think it makes a great deal of
difference. If you try to run over the dog he knows how to
calculate, but if you are trying to miss him he does not know how
to calculate, and is liable to jump the wrong way every time. It
was always so in my experience. Even when I could not hit a
wagon I could hit a dog that came to see me practice. They all
liked to see me practice, and they all came, for there was very
little going on in our neighborhood to entertain a dog. It took
time to learn to miss a dog, but I achieved even that.
I can steer as well as I want to, now, and I will catch that
boy one of these days and run over HIM if he doesn’t reform.
Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.
IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
(from My Autobiography)
Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished
manuscript which constitute this formidable Autobiography and
Diary of mine, certain chapters will in some distant future be
found which deal with “Claimants”–claimants historically
notorious: Satan, Claimant; the Golden Calf, Claimant; the
Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Claimant; Louis XVII., Claimant;
William Shakespeare, Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant; Mary Baker
G. Eddy, Claimant–and the rest of them. Eminent Claimants,
successful Claimants, defeated Claimants, royal Claimants, pleb
Claimants, showy Claimants, shabby Claimants, revered Claimants,
despised Claimants, twinkle star-like here and there and yonder
through the mists of history and legend and tradition–and, oh,
all the darling tribe are clothed in mystery and romance, and we
read about them with deep interest and discuss them with loving
sympathy or with rancorous resentment, according to which side we
hitch ourselves to. It has always been so with the human race.
There was never a Claimant that couldn’t get a hearing, nor one
that couldn’t accumulate a rapturous following, no matter how
flimsy and apparently unauthentic his claim might be. Arthur
Orton’s claim that he was the lost Tichborne baronet come to life
again was as flimsy as Mrs. Eddy’s that she wrote SCIENCE AND
HEALTH from the direct dictation of the Deity; yet in England
nearly forty years ago Orton had a huge army of devotees and
incorrigible adherents, many of whom remained stubbornly
unconvinced after their fat god had been proven an impostor and
jailed as a perjurer, and today Mrs. Eddy’s following is not only
immense, but is daily augmenting in numbers and enthusiasm.
Orton had many fine and educated minds among his adherents, Mrs.
Eddy has had the like among hers from the beginning. Her Church
is as well equipped in those particulars as is any other Church.
Claimants can always count upon a following, it doesn’t matter
who they are, nor what they claim, nor whether they come with
documents or without. It was always so. Down out of the long-
vanished past, across the abyss of the ages, if you listen, you
can still hear the believing multitudes shouting for Perkin
Warbeck and Lambert Simnel.
A friend has sent me a new book, from England–THE
SHAKESPEARE PROBLEM RESTATED–well restated and closely reasoned;
and my fifty years’ interest in that matter–asleep for the last
three years–is excited once more. It is an interest which was
born of Delia Bacon’s book–away back in the ancient day–1857,
or maybe 1856. About a year later my pilot-master, Bixby,
transferred me from his own steamboat to the PENNSYLVANIA, and
placed me under the orders and instructions of George Ealer–dead
now, these many, many years. I steered for him a good many
months–as was the humble duty of the pilot-apprentice: stood a
daylight watch and spun the wheel under the severe
superintendence and correction of the master. He was a prime
chess-player and an idolater of Shakespeare. He would play chess
with anybody; even with me, and it cost his official dignity
something to do that. Also–quite uninvited–he would read
Shakespeare to me; not just casually, but by the hour, when it
was his watch and I was steering. He read well, but not