He certainly was a good reader, and splendidly thrilling and stormy
and tragic, but it was a damage to me, because I have never since
been able to read Shakespeare in a calm and sane way. I cannot rid
it of his explosive interlardings, they break in everywhere with
their irrelevant "What in hell are you up to NOW! pull her down!
more! MORE!--there now, steady as you go," and the other
disorganizing interruptions that were always leaping from his
mouth. When I read Shakespeare now, I can hear them as plainly as
I did in that long-departed time--fifty-one years ago. I never
regarded Ealer's readings as educational. Indeed they were a
detriment to me.

His contributions to the text seldom improved it, but barring that
detail he was a good reader, I can say that much for him. He did
not use the book, and did not need to; he knew his Shakespeare as
well as Euclid ever knew his multiplication table.

Did he have something to say--this Shakespeare-adoring Mississippi
pilot--anent Delia Bacon's book? Yes. And he said it; said it all
the time, for months--in the morning watch, the middle watch, the
dog watch; and probably kept it going in his sleep. He bought the
literature of the dispute as fast as it appeared, and we discussed
it all through thirteen hundred miles of river four times traversed
in every thirty-five days--the time required by that swift boat to
achieve two round trips. We discussed, and discussed, and
discussed, and disputed and disputed and disputed; at any rate he
did, and I got in a word now and then when he slipped a cog and
there was a vacancy. He did his arguing with heat, with energy,
with violence; and I did mine with the reserve and moderation of a
subordinate who does not like to be flung out of a pilot-house that