, doctors, lawyers, iditors? Won't annybody get up? Won't
annybody say that they don't know annything about annything worth
knowin' about? Thin, be Hivens, I will. All alone I'll stand up befure
me class an' say: 'Hinnissy, about annything that can't be weighed on a
scales or measured with a tape line I'm as ign'rant as--ye'ersilf. I'll
have to pay ye back th' money I took fr'm ye f'r ye'er schoolin'. It was
obtained be false pretences.'
"How can I know annything, whin I haven't puzzled out what I am mesilf.
I am Dooley, ye say, but ye're on'y a casual obsarver. Ye don't care
annything about me details. Ye look at me with a gin'ral eye. Nawthin'
that happens to me really hurts ye. Ye say, 'I'll go over to see
Dooley,' sometimes, but more often ye say, 'I'll go over to Dooley's.'
I'm a house to ye, wan iv a thousand that look like a row iv model
wurrukin'men's cottages. I'm a post to hitch ye'er silences to. I'm
always about th' same to ye. But to me I'm a millyon Dooleys an' all iv
thim sthrangers to ME. I niver know which wan iv thim is comin' in. I'm
like a hotel keeper with on'y wan bed an' a millyon guests, who come wan
at a time an' tumble each other out. I set up late at night an' pass th'
bottle with a gay an' careless Dooley that hasn't a sorrow in th'
wurruld, an' suddenly I look up an' see settin' acrost fr'm me a gloomy
wretch that fires th' dhrink out iv th' window an' chases me to bed. I'm
just gettin' used to him whin another Dooley comes in, a cross,
cantankerous, crazy fellow that insists on eatin' breakfast with me. An'
so it goes. I know more about mesilf than annybody knows an' I know
nawthin'. Though I'd make a map fr'm mem'ry an' gossip iv anny other
man, f'r mesilf I'm still uncharted.
"So what's th' use iv thryin' to know annything less important. Don't
thry. All ye've got to do is to believe what ye hear, an' if ye do that
enough, afther a while ye'll hear what ye believe. Ye've got to start in
believin' befure ye can find a reason f'r ye'er belief. Our old frind
Christopher Columbus hadn't anny good reason f'r believin' that there
was anny such a place as America. But he believed it without a reason
an' thin wint out an' found it. Th' fellows that discovered th' canals
on Mars which other fellows think cud be cured be a good oculist, hadn't
anny right to think there were canals on Mars. But wan iv thim said: 'I
wondher if there ar-re canals on Mars; I believe there ar-re. I'll look
an' see. B
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