down a barnyard fowl. But the chicken may be worth bagging for all
that, he said, good-humoredly.

X

Caveat Lector. Let the reader look out for himself. The old Master,
whose words I have so frequently quoted and shall quote more of, is a
dogmatist who lays down the law, ex cathedra, from the chair of his own
personality. I do not deny that he has the ambition of knowing something
about a greater number of subjects than any one man ought to meddle with,
except in a very humble and modest way. And that is not his way. There
was no doubt something of, humorous bravado in his saying that the actual
"order of things" did not offer a field sufficiently ample for his
intelligence. But if I found fault with him, which would be easy enough,
I should say that he holds and expresses definite opinions about matters
that he could afford to leave open questions, or ask the judgment of
others about. But I do not want to find fault with him. If he does not
settle all the points he speaks of so authoritatively, he sets me
thinking about them, and I like a man as a companion who is not afraid of
a half-truth. I know he says some things peremptorily that he may
inwardly debate with himself. There are two ways of dealing with
assertions of this kind. One may attack them on the false side and
perhaps gain a conversational victory. But I like better to take them up
on the true side and see how much can be made of that aspect of the
dogmatic assertion. It is the only comfortable way of dealing with
persons like the old Master.

There have been three famous talkers in Great Britain, either of whom
would illustrate what I say about dogmatists well enough for my purpose.
You cannot doubt to what three I refer: Samuel the First, Samuel the
Second, and Thomas, last of the Dynasty. (I mean the living Thomas and
not Thomas B.)

I say the last of the Dynasty, for the conversational dogmatist on the
imperial scale becomes every year more and more an impossibility. If he
is in intelligent company he will be almost sure to find some one who
knows more about some of the subjects he generalizes upon than any
wholesale thinker who handles knowledge by the cargo is like to know. I
find myself, at certain intervals, in the society of a number of experts
in science, literature, and art, who cover a pretty wide range, taking
them all together, of human knowledge. I have not the least doubt that
if the great Dr. Samuel Johnson shou