e could prove that the author of Hamlet was a
weakling, by selecting all the obscure and stupid passages, and parading
these with the unexplained fact that the play opens with the spirit of a
dead man coming back to earth, and a little later in the same play
Shakespeare has the man who interviewed the ghost tell of "that bourne
from whence no traveler returns." Even Shakespeare was not a genius all
the time. And Ingersoll, the searcher for truth, borrowed from his
friends, the priests, the cheerful habit of secreting the particular
thing that would not help the cause in hand. But one of the best things
in Ingersoll's character was that he realized his lapses and in private
acknowledged them.

On reading the smooth, florid and plausible sophistry of Wilberforce,
Ingersoll once said: "Be easy on Soapy Sam! A few years ago, a little
shifting of base on the part of my ancestors, and I would probably have
had Soapy Sam's job."

This resemblance of opposites makes a person think of that remark
applied to Voltaire. "He was the father of all those who wear
shovel-hats."

* * * * *

When Thomas Huxley and his wife arrived in New York in Eighteen Hundred
Seventy-six, on a visit to the Centennial Exhibition, this interesting
item was flashed over the country, "Huxley and his titled bride have
arrived in New York on their wedding-journey."

This item caused Mr. and Mrs. Huxley--both of them royal democrats--more
joy than did the most complimentary interview. At home they had left a
charming little brood of seven children, three of them nearly grown-ups.

Huxley sent Tyndall, who a few months before had married a daughter of
Lord Hamilton, the clipping and this note: "You see how that once I am
in a democratic country I am pulling all the honors I can in my own
direction." The next letter the Huxleys received from Tyndall was
addressed, "Sir Thomas and Lady Huxley." Huxley never stood in much awe
of the nobility; he evidently felt that there was another kind of which
he himself in degree was heir. Huxley never had a better friend than Sir
Joseph Hooker, and we see in his letters such postscripts as this:

"Dear Sir Joseph: Do come and dine with us; it is a month since we have
seen your homely old phiz." And Sir Joseph replies that he will be on
hand the next Sunday evening and offers this mild suggestion,
"Scientific gents as has countenances as curdles milk should not cast
aspersions on men ma