For a while. Only for a while. Only for a very little while,
a very, very, very little while. Then the atmosphere began
to change; began to cool off.
A brighter person would have seen what the trouble was,
earlier than I did, perhaps, but I saw it early enough for all
practical purposes. You see, he was of an argumentative
disposition. Therefore it took him but a little time to get
tired of arguing with a person who agreed with everything he said
and consequently never furnished him a provocative to flare up
and show what he could do when it came to clear, cold, hard,
rose-cut, hundred-faceted, diamond-flashing REASONING. That was
his name for it. It has been applied since, with complacency, as
many as several times, in the Bacon-Shakespeare scuffle. On the
Shakespeare side.
Then the thing happened which has happened to more persons
than to me when principle and personal interest found themselves
in opposition to each other and a choice had to be made: I let
principle go, and went over to the other side. Not the entire
way, but far enough to answer the requirements of the case. That
is to say, I took this attitude–to wit, I only BELIEVED Bacon
wrote Shakespeare, whereas I KNEW Shakespeare didn’t. Ealer was
satisfied with that, and the war broke loose. Study, practice,
experience in handling my end of the matter presently enabled me
to take my new position almost seriously; a little bit later,
utterly seriously; a little later still, lovingly, gratefully,
devotedly; finally: fiercely, rabidly, uncompromisingly. After
that I was welded to my faith, I was theoretically ready to die
for it, and I looked down with compassion not unmixed with scorn
upon everybody else’s faith that didn’t tally with mine. That
faith, imposed upon me by self-interest in that ancient day,
remains my faith today, and in it I find comfort, solace, peace,
and never-failing joy. You see how curiously theological it is.
The “rice Christian” of the Orient goes through the very same
steps, when he is after rice and the missionary is after HIM; he
goes for rice, and remains to worship.
Ealer did a lot of our “reasoning”–not to say substantially
all of it. The slaves of his cult have a passion for calling it
by that large name. We others do not call our inductions and
deductions and reductions by any name at all. They show for
themselves what they are, and we can with tranquil confidence
leave the world to ennoble them with a title of its own choosing.
Now and then when Ealer had to stop to cough, I pulled my
induction-talents together and hove the controversial lead
myself: always getting eight feet, eight and a half, often nine,
sometimes even quarter-less-twain–as _I_ believed; but always
“no bottom,” as HE said.
I got the best of him only once. I prepared myself. I
wrote out a passage from Shakespeare–it may have been the very
one I quoted awhile ago, I don’t remember–and riddled it with
his wild steamboatful interlardings. When an unrisky opportunity
offered, one lovely summer day, when we had sounded and buoyed a
tangled patch of crossings known as Hell’s Half Acre, and were
aboard again and he had sneaked the PENNSYLVANIA triumphantly
through it without once scraping sand, and the A. T. LACEY had
followed in our wake and got stuck, and he was feeling good, I
showed it to him. It amused him. I asked him to fire it off–
READ it; read it, I diplomatically added, as only HE could read
dramatic poetry. The compliment touched him where he lived. He
did read it; read it with surpassing fire and spirit; read it as
it will never be read again; for HE know how to put the right
music into those thunderous interlardings and make them seem a
part of the text, make them sound as if they were bursting from
Shakespeare’s own soul, each one of them a golden inspiration and
not to be left out without damage to the massed and magnificent
whole.
I waited a week, to let the incident fade; waited longer;
waited until he brought up for reasonings and vituperation my pet