m each other after that, and I made up
my mind I'd die before I'd marry Doc so long as he was Shakespeare, and
Doc had got the notion that he was Shakespeare so set in his mind it
seemed likely he would.

"I hadn't never took much stock in poetry readin' since I got out of
'Mother Goose,' but I begun to read Shakespeare a little jist to see
what kind of poetry Doc thought he had writ when he was Shakespeare.
Well, I wouldn't want to see sich books in the Sunday School Lib'ry,
that's all I've got to say. Some I couldn't make sense out of, but there
was one long poem about Venus and some young feller--well, I shouldn't
thing the gov'ment would allow sich things printed! I jist knowed Doc
couldn't ever have writ such stuff. There ain't so much meanness in him.
But I couldn't see clear how to make Doc see it that way.

"I'd about given up hopes of ever curing Doc, when one day a feller come
to town and give a lecture in the dance room over the grocery. He was
one of these spiritualism fellers, and as soon as it was noised around
that he was comin', I knowed Doc would be the first man to go and the
last to come away, and he was. Thinks I, 'Let him go. If Doc jines in
with spiritualists, it will be better'n what he believes in now, and if
he begins changin' religions, mebby I can keep him changin', and change
him into a churchgoer." And so, jist to see what Doc was like to be,
I coaxed ma to go, an' I went, too. It wasn't near so sinful as I
expected.

"The feller's name was Gilson, an' he was as pale as a picked chicken,
but real common lookin', otherwise. He was a right-down good talker and
seemed real earnest. He wasn't the ghost-raisin' kind of spiritualist,
and them that went to see a show, come away dissap'inted, for all he did
was to talk and take up a collection. He said he was a new beginner and
used to be a Presbyterian minister. Doc stayed after it was over and had
a talk with Gilson, and of course he got converted, like he always did.
He told ma so.

"I hadn't been havin' much talk with Doc one way or another, but when ma
told me he had jined the spiritualists I eased up a litt, and one day
I made bold to say, 'Well, Doc, I s'pose now you have give up that
Shakespeare foolishness, ain't you?'

"'No, Loreny,' he says, 'I ain't.'

"'Land's sakes!' I says, 'do you mean to say you can be two things at
once in religion, as well as bein' Shakespeare and Doc Weaver?'

"'Yes, Loreny,' he says. 'The spirit has got