Journeys to Bagdad | Page 6

guess, ten thousand rat-traps will move on
down the street. It's sure they take us for Hamelin Town, and are eager
to lay their ambushment. There is something rather stirring in such
prodigious marshaling, but I hear you ask what this has to do with
truantry.
It was near quitting time yesterday that a dray was discharging cases
down a shoot. These cases were secured with metal reinforcement, and
this metal being rubbed bright happened to catch a ray of the sun at
such an angle that it was reflected in my eye. This flash, which was like
lightning in its intensity, together with the roar of the falling case,
transported me--it's monstrous what jumps we take when the fit is on
us--to the slopes of dim mountains in the night, to the heights above
Valhalla with the flash of Valkyrs descending. And the booming of the
case upon the slide--God pity me--was the music. It was thus that I was
sent aloft upon the mountains of the North, into the glare of lightning,
with the cry of Valkyrs above the storm....
But presently there was a voice from the street. "It's the last case
to-night, Sam, you lunk-head. It's quitting time."
The light fades on Long Street. The drays have gone home. The Earls
of Leicester drowse in their own kitchens, or spread whole slices of
bread on their broad, aristocratic palms. Somewhere in the dimmest
recesses of those cluttered buildings ten thousand rat-traps await
expectant the oncoming of the rats. And in your own basement--the
shadows having prospered in the twilight--it is sure (by the beard of the
prophet, it is sure) that the ash-pit door is again ajar and that a pair of
eyes gleam upon you from the darkness. If, on the instant, you will
crouch behind the laundry tubs and will hold your breath--as though a
doctor's thermometer were in your mouth, you with a cold in the

head--it's likely that you will see a Persian climb from the pit, shake the
ashes off him, and make for the vantage of the woodpile, where--the
window being barred--he will sigh his soul for the freedom of the night.
[Illustration]

THE WORST EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE

[Illustration]
THE WORST EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE
Reader, if by fortunate chance you have a son of tender years--the age
is best from the sixth to the eleventh summer--or in lieu of a son, a
nephew, only a few years in pants--mere shoots of nether garments not
yet descending to the knees--doubtless, if such fortunate chance be
yours, you went on one or more occasions last summer to a circus.
If the true holiday spirit be in you--and you be of other sort, I'll not
chronicle you--you will have come early to the scene for a just
examination of what mysteries and excitements are set forth in the
side-shows. Now if you be a man of humane reasoning, you will stand
lightly on your legs, alert to be pulled this way or that as the nepotic
wish shall direct, whether it be to the fat woman's booth or to the
platform where the thin man sits with legs entwined behind his neck, in
delightful promise of what joy awaits you when you have dropped your
nickel in the box and gone inside. To draw your steps, it is the
showman's privilege to make what blare he please upon the sidewalk;
to puff his cheeks with robustious announcement.
If by further fortunate chance, you are addicted, let us say, in the
quieter hours of winter, to writing of any kind--and for your joy, I pray
that this be so, whether this writing be in massive volumes, or obscure
and unpublished beyond its demerit--if such has been your addiction,
you have found, doubtless, that your case lies much like the fat

woman's; that it is the show you give before the door that must
determine what numbers go within--that, to be plain with you, much
thought must be given to the taking of your title. It must be a most
alluring trumpeting, above the din of rival shows.
So I have named this article with thought of how I might stir your
learned curiosity. I have set scholars' words upon my platform, thereby
to make you think how prodigiously I have stuffed the matter in. And
all this while, my article has to do only with a certain set of
Shakespeare in nine calfskin volumes, edited by a man named John
Bell, now long since dead, which set happens to have stood for several
years upon my shelves; also, how it was disclosed to me that he was the
worst of all editors, together with the reasons thereto and his final
acquittal from the charge.
John Bell has stood, for the most part, in unfingered