Now then, I am away along in life—my seventy-third
year being already well behind me—yet sixteen
of my Hannibal schoolmates are still alive today,
and can tell—and do tell—inquirers
dozens and dozens of incidents of their young lives
and mine together; things that happened to us in the
morning of life, in the blossom of our youth, in the
good days, the dear days, “the days when we
went gipsying, a long time ago.” Most
of them creditable to me, too. One child to whom
I paid court when she was five years old and I eight
still lives in Hannibal, and she visited me last summer,
traversing the necessary ten or twelve hundred miles
of railroad without damage to her patience or to her
old-young vigor. Another little lassie to whom
I paid attention in Hannibal when she was nine years
old and I the same, is still alive—in London—and
hale and hearty, just as I am. And on the few
surviving steamboats—those lingering ghosts
and remembrancers of great fleets that plied the big
river in the beginning of my water-career—which
is exactly as long ago as the whole invoice of the
life-years of Shakespeare numbers—there
are still findable two or three river-pilots who saw
me do creditable things in those ancient days; and
several white-headed engineers; and several roustabouts
and mates; and several deck-hands who used to heave
the lead for me and send up on the still night the
“Six—feet—scant!”
that made me shudder, and the “M-a-r-k—twain!”
that took the shudder away, and presently the darling
“By the d-e-e-p—four!”
that lifted me to heaven for joy. [1] They know about
me, and can tell. And so do printers, from St.
Louis to New York; and so do newspaper reporters, from
Nevada to San Francisco. And so do the police.
If Shakespeare had really been celebrated, like me,
Stratford could have told things about him; and if
my experience goes for anything, they’d have
done it.
------ 1. Four fathoms--twenty-four feet.
If I had under my superintendence a controversy appointed
to decide whether Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare or
not, I believe I would place before the debaters only
the one question, was Shakespeare ever
A practicing lawyer? and leave everything
else out.
It is maintained that the man who wrote the plays
was not merely myriad-minded, but also myriad-accomplished:
that he not only knew some thousands of things about
human life in all its shades and grades, and about
the hundred arts and trades and crafts and professions
which men busy themselves in, but that he could talk
about the men and their grades and trades accurately,
making no mistakes. Maybe it is so, but have
the experts spoken, or is it only Tom, Dick, and Harry?
Does the exhibit stand upon wide, and loose, and
eloquent generalizing—which is not evidence,
and not proof—or upon details, particulars,
statistics, illustrations, demonstrations?
