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 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 works, 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.

Oh, 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 b