I can steer as well as I want to, now, and I will catch that boy 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)

Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished manuscript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. Eddy's
following is not only immense, but is daily augmenting in numbers and
enthusiasm. Orton had many fine and educated minds among his adherents,
Mrs. Eddy has had the like among hers from the beginning. Her Church is
as well equipped in those particulars as is any other Church. Claimants
can always count upon a following, it doesn't matter who they are, nor
what they claim, nor whether they come with documents or without. It was
always so. Down out of the long-vanished past, across the abyss of
the ages, if you listen, you can still hear the believing multitudes
shouting for Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel.

A