There was a row of low stepping-stones across one end of the street, a
measured yard apart. Even after I got so I could steer pretty fairly I
was so afraid of those stones that I always hit them. They gave me the
worst falls I ever got in that street, except those which I got from
dogs. I have seen it stated that no expert is quick enough to run over
a dog; that a dog is always able to skip out of his way. I think that
that may be true: but I think that the reason he couldn’t run over the
dog was because he was trying to. I did not try to run over any dog.
But I ran over every dog that came along. I think it makes a great deal
of difference. If you try to run over the dog he knows how to
calculate, but if you are trying to miss him he does not know how to
calculate, and is liable to jump the wrong way every time. It was
always so in my experience. Even when I could not hit a wagon I could
hit a dog that came to see me practice. They all liked to see me
practice, and they all came, for there was very little going on in our
neighborhood to entertain a dog. It took time to learn to miss a dog,
but I achieved even that.
I can steer as well as I want to, now, and I will catch that boy out
one of these days and run over HIM if he doesn’t reform.
Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.
IS SHAKESPEARE DEAD?
(from _My Autobiography_)
I
Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript
which constitute this formidable Autobiography and Diary of mine,
certain chapters will in some distant future be found which deal with
“Claimants”—claimants historically notorious: Satan, Claimant; the
Golden Calf, Claimant; the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, Claimant; Louis
XVII., Claimant; William Shakespeare, Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant;
Mary Baker G. Eddy, Claimant—and the rest of them. Eminent Claimants,
successful Claimants, defeated Claimants, royal Claimants, pleb
Claimants, showy Claimants, shabby Claimants, revered Claimants,
despised Claimants, twinkle star-like here and there and yonder through
the mists of history and legend and tradition—and, oh, all the darling
tribe are clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about them with
deep interest and discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous
resentment, according to which side we hitch ourselves to. It has
always been so with the human race. There was never a Claimant that
couldn’t get a hearing, nor one that couldn’t accumulate a rapturous
following, no matter how flimsy and apparently unauthentic his claim
might be. Arthur Orton’s claim that he was the lost Tichborne baronet
come to life again was as flimsy as Mrs. Eddy’s that she wrote _Science
And Health_ from the direct dictation of the Deity; yet in England
nearly forty years ago Orton had a huge army of devotees and
incorrigible adherents, many of whom remained stubbornly unconvinced
after their fat god had been proven an impostor and jailed as a
perjurer, and today Mrs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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