ing ever _I_ see before. This is the speech--I learned it, easy
enough, while he was learning it to the king:

To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to
Dunsinane,
But that the fear of something after death
Murders the innocent sleep,
Great nature's second course,
And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune
Than fly to others that we know not of.
There's the respect must give us pause:
Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The law's delay, and the quietus which his pangs might take,
In the dead waste and middle of the night, when churchyards
yawn
In customary suits of solemn black,
But that the undiscovered country from whose bourne no
traveler returns,
Breathes forth contagion on the world,
And thus the native hue of resolution, like the poor cat i' the
adage,
Is sicklied o'er with care,
And all the clouds that lowered o'er our housetops,
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. But soft you, the
fair Ophelia:
Ope not thy ponderous and marble jaws,
But get thee to a nunnery--go!

Well, the old man he liked that speech, and he mighty soon got it so
he could do it first rate. It seemed like he was just born for it; and
when he had his hand in and was excited, it was perfectly lovely the
way he would rip and tear and rair up behind when he was getting it
off.

The first chance we got the duke he had some show-bills printed; and
after that, for two or three days as we floated along, the raft was a
most uncommon lively place, for there warn't nothing but
sword-fighting and rehearsing--as the duke called it--going on all the
time. One morning, when we was pretty well down the state of Arkansaw,
we come in sight of a little one-horse town in a big bend; so we tied
up about three-quarters of a mile above it, in the mouth of a crick
which was shut in like a tunnel by the cypress trees, and all of us
but Jim took the canoe and went down there to see if there was any
chance in that place for our show.

We struck it mighty lucky; there was going to be a circus there that
afternoon, and