and into his twenties.

At fifteen Bacon was sent to the university, and he spent three
years there. Thence he went to Paris in the train of the English
Ambassador, and there he mingled daily with the wise, the cultured,
the great, and the aristocracy of fashion, during another three
years. A total of six years spent at the sources of knowledge;
knowledge both of books and of men. The three spent at the
university were coeval with the second and last three spent by the
little Stratford lad at Stratford school supposedly, and
perhapsedly, and maybe, and by inference--with nothing to infer
from. The second three of the Baconian six were "presumably" spent
by the Stratford lad as apprentice to a butcher. That is, the
thugs presume it--on no evidence of any kind. Which is their way,
when they want a historical fact. Fact and presumption are, for
business purposes, all the same to them. They know the difference,
but they also know how to blink it. They know, too, that while in
history-building a fact is better than a presumption, it doesn't
take a presumption long to bloom into a fact when THEY have the
handling of it. They know by old experience that when they get
hold of a presumption-tadpole he is not going to STAY tadpole in
their history-tank; no, they know how to develop him into the giant
four-legged bullfrog of FACT, and make him sit up on his hams, and
puff out his chin, and look important and insolent and come-to-
stay; and assert his genuine simon-pure authenticity with a
thundering bellow that will convince everybody because it is so
loud. The thug is aware that loudness convinces sixty persons
where reasoning convinces but one. I wouldn't be a thug, not even
if--but never mind about that, it has nothing to do with the
argument, and it is not noble in spirit besides. If I am better