he hair of his hearers stand on
end, their sides almost split open, and the very marrow in their spines
wriggle. Indeed, his version of the tale might have caused similar
results in Robinson Crusoe himself, had he been there to hear it,
besides causing his eyebrows to rise and vanish evermore among the hair
of his head with astonishment.

It was the same with the Pilgrim's Progress, which he often told to them
afterwards. Simple justice to Adams, however, requires us to state that
he was particularly careful to impress on his hearers that the Pilgrim's
Progress was a religious tale.

"It's a allegory, you must know," he said, on first introducing it,
"which means a story intended to teach some good lesson--a story which
says one thing and means another."

He looked pointedly at Dan McCoy here, as if to say, "That's an
exhaustive explanation, which takes the wind out o' _your_ sails, young
man," but Dan was not to be so easily silenced.

"What's the use, father," he asked, with an air of affected simplicity,
"of a story sayin' one thing an' meanin' another? Wouldn't it be more
honest like if it said what it meant at once, straight off?"

"P'r'aps it would," returned Adams, who secretly enjoyed Dan's
irrepressible impudence; "but, then, if it did, Dan, it would take away
your chance of askin' questions, d'ye see? Anyhow, _this_ story don't
say what it means straight off, an' that gives me a chance to expound
it."

Now, it was in the expounding of the Pilgrim's Progress that John
Adams's peculiar talents shone out brilliantly, for not only did he
"misremember," jumble, and confuse the whole allegory, but he so
misapprehended its meaning in many points, that the lessons taught and
the morals drawn were very wide of the mark indeed. In regard to some
particular points, too, he felt himself at liberty to let his genius
have free untrammelled scope, as, for instance, in the celebrated battle
between Christian and Apollyon. Arguing with himself that it was not
possible for any man to overdo a fight with the devil, Adams made up his
mind to "go well in" for that incident, and spent a whole evening over
it, keeping his audience glaring and on the rack of expectation the
whole time. Taking, perhaps, an unfair advantage of his minute
knowledge as a man-of-war's-man of cutlass-drill and of fighting in
general, from pugilistic encounters to great-gun exercise, including all
the intermediate performances with rapiers, sw