What man dare, _I_ dare! Approach thou _what_ are you laying in the leads for? what a hell of an idea! like the rugged ease her off a little, ease her off! rugged Russian bear, the armed rhinoceros or the _there_ she goes! meet her, meet her! didn’t you _know_ she’d smell the reef if you crowded it like that? Hyrcan tiger; take any shape but that and my firm nerves she’ll be in the _woods_ the first you know! stop the starboard! come ahead strong on the larboard! back the starboard!... _now_ then, you’re all right; come ahead on the starboard; straighten up and go ’long, never tremble: or be alive again, and dare me to the desert _damnation_ can’t you keep away from that greasy water? pull her down! snatch her! snatch her baldheaded! with thy sword; if trembling I inhabit then, lay in the leads!—no, only with the starboard one, leave the other alone, protest me the baby of a girl. Hence horrible shadow! eight bells—that watchman’s asleep again, I reckon, go down and call Brown yourself, unreal mockery, hence! He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy and tragic, but it was a damage to me, because I have never since been able to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way. I cannot rid it of his explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with their irrelevant, “What in hell are you up to _now_! pull her down! more! _More!_—there now, steady as you go,” and the other disorganizing interruptions that were always leaping from his mouth. When I read Shakespeare now I can hear them as plainly as I did in that long-departed time—fifty-one years ago. I never regarded Ealer’s readings as educational. Indeed, they were a detriment to me. His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that detail he was a good reader; I can say that much for him. He did not use the book, and did not need to; he knew his Shakespeare as well as Euclid ever knew his multiplication table. Did he have something to say—this Shakespeare-adoring Mississippi pilot—anent Delia Bacon’s book?