time a surmiser needs in his business--and thus became familiar
with soldiership and soldier-ways and soldier-talk, and generalship
and general-ways and general-talk, and seamanship and sailor-ways
and sailor-talk.

Maybe he did all these things, but I would like to know who held
the horses in the meantime; and who studied the books in the
garret; and who frollicked in the law-courts for recreation. Also,
who did the call-boying and the play-acting.

For he became a call-boy; and as early as '93 he became a
"vagabond"--the law's ungentle term for an unlisted actor; and in
'94 a "regular" and properly and officially listed member of that
(in those days) lightly-valued and not much respected profession.

Right soon thereafter he became a stockholder in two theatres, and
manager of them. Thenceforward he was a busy and flourishing
business man, and was raking in money with both hands for twenty
years. Then in a noble frenzy of poetic inspiration he wrote his
one poem--his only poem, his darling--and laid him down and died:


Good friend for Iesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust encloased heare:
Blest be ye man yt spares thes stones
And curst be he yt moves my bones.


He was probably dead when he wrote it. Still, this is only
conjecture. We have only circumstantial evidence. Internal