g that Bob stood
like Falstaff at Gadshill and fought the rogues in buckram to a
standstill.

Heaven forfend me from my friends--I can withstand mine enemies alone!

I am quite ready to believe that Bob, being attacked by an overwhelming
force, suddenly bethought him of an engagement, and made a swift run for
safety. The impeccable man who has never done a cowardly thing, nor a
mean thing, is no kinsman of mine! The saintly hero who has not had his
heels run away with his head, and sought safety in a friendly
pig-pen--aye! and filled his belly with the husks that the swine did
eat--has dropped something out of his life that he will have to go back
for and pick up in another incarnation. We love men for their
limitations and weaknesses, no less than for their virtues. A fault may
bring a man very close to us. Have we, too, not sought safety in
pig-pens! The people who taunt other people with having taken temporary
refuge in a pig-pen are usually those who live in pig-pens the whole
year 'round.

The one time in the life of Savonarola when he comes nearest to us is
when his tortured flesh wrenched from his spirit a recantation. And who
can forget that cry of Calvary, "My God, my God! Why hast thou forsaken
me!" That call for help, coming to us across twenty centuries, makes the
man, indeed, our Elder Brother.

And let it here be stated that even Bob's bitterest foe never declared
that the man was a coward by nature, nor that the business of his life
was hiding in pig-pens. The incident named was exceptional and therefore
noteworthy; let us admit it, at least not worry ourselves into a passion
denying it. Let us also stipulate the truth that Bob could never quite
overcome the temptation to take an unfair advantage of his opponent in
an argument. He laid the fools by the heels and suddenly, 'gainst all
the rules of either Roberts or Queensbury.

To go after the prevaricators, and track them to their holes, is to make
much of little, and lift the liars into the realm of equals. This story
of the pig-pen I never heard of until Ingersoll's friends denied it in a
book.

Just one instance to show how trifles light as air are to the zealous
confirmation strong as holy writ. In April, Eighteen Hundred
Ninety-four, Ingersoll lectured at Utica, New York. The following Sunday
a local clergyman denounced the lecturer as a sensualist, a
gourmand--one totally indifferent to decency and the feelings and rights
of others. Then the