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 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 persona