position, my pet argument, the one which I was fondest of, the
one which I prized far above all others in my ammunition-wagon–
to wit, that Shakespeare couldn’t have written Shakespeare’s
words, for the reason that the man who wrote them was limitlessly
familiar with the laws, and the law-courts, and law-proceedings,
and lawyer-talk, and lawyer-ways–and if Shakespeare was
possessed of the infinitely divided star-dust that constituted
this vast wealth, HOW did he get it, and WHERE and WHEN?
“From books.”
From books! That was always the idea. I answered as my
readings of the champions of my side of the great controversy had
taught me to answer: that a man can’t handle glibly and easily
and comfortably and successfully the argot of a trade at which he
has not personally served. He will make mistakes; he will not,
and cannot, get the trade-phrasings precisely and exactly right;
and the moment he departs, by even a shade, from a common trade-
form, the reader who has served that trade will know the writer
HASN’T. Ealer would not be convinced; he said a man could learn
how to correctly handle the subtleties and mysteries and free-
masonries of ANY trade by careful reading and studying. But when
I got him to read again the passage from Shakespeare with the
interlardings, he perceived, himself, that books couldn’t teach a
student a bewildering multitude of pilot-phrases so thoroughly
and perfectly that he could talk them off in book and play or
conversation and make no mistake that a pilot would not
immediately discover. It was a triumph for me. He was silent
awhile, and I knew what was happening–he was losing his temper.
And I knew he would presently close the session with the same old
argument that was always his stay and his support in time of
need; the same old argument, the one I couldn’t answer, because I
dasn’t–the argument that I was an ass, and better shut up. He
delivered it, and I obeyed.
O dear, how long ago it was–how pathetically long ago! And
here am I, old, forsaken, forlorn, and alone, arranging to get
that argument out of somebody again.
When a man has a passion for Shakespeare, it goes without
saying that he keeps company with other standard authors. Ealer
always had several high-class books in the pilot-house, and he
read the same ones over and over again, and did not care to
change to newer and fresher ones. He played well on the flute,
and greatly enjoyed hearing himself play. So did I. He had a
notion that a flute would keep its health better if you took it
apart when it was not standing a watch; and so, when it was not
on duty it took its rest, disjointed, on the compass-shelf under
the breastboard. When the PENNSYLVANIA blew up and became a
drifting rack-heap freighted with wounded and dying poor souls
(my young brother Henry among them), pilot Brown had the watch
below, and was probably asleep and never knew what killed him;
but Ealer escaped unhurt. He and his pilot-house were shot up
into the air; then they fell, and Ealer sank through the ragged
cavern where the hurricane-deck and the boiler-deck had been, and
landed in a nest of ruins on the main deck, on top of one of the
unexploded boilers, where he lay prone in a fog of scald and
deadly steam. But not for long. He did not lose his head–long
familiarity with danger had taught him to keep it, in any and all
emergencies. He held his coat-lapels to his nose with one hand,
to keep out the steam, and scrabbled around with the other till
he found the joints of his flute, then he took measures to save
himself alive, and was successful. I was not on board. I had
been put ashore in New Orleans by Captain Klinenfelter. The
reason–however, I have told all about it in the book called OLD
TIMES ON THE MISSISSIPPI, and it isn’t important, anyway, it is
so long ago.
II
When I was a Sunday-school scholar, something more than
sixty years ago, I became interested in Satan, and wanted to find