WHAT IS MAN? AND OTHER ESSAYS OF MARK TWAIN

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 old-young 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 numbers–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 deck-hands who

used to heave the lead for me and send up on the still night 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. [1] 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

celebrated, like me, Stratford could have told things about him;

and if my experience goes for anything, they’d have done it.

——

1. Four fathoms–twenty-four feet.

VII

If 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 myriad-minded, 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 craft-

equipments, so far as my recollections of Shakespeare-Bacon talk

abide with me–his law-equipment. I do not remember that

Wellington or Napoleon 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 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 any illustrious Latinist or Grecian or

Frenchman or Spaniard or Italian has 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 early days, but with the law it is

different: it is mile-stoned and documented all the way back,

and the master of that wonderful trade, that complex and

intricate trade, that awe-compelling trade, has competent ways of

knowing whether Shakespeare-law is good law or not; and whether

his law-court procedure is correct or not, and whether his legal

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