The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1903-04-03

good a grade Of vanish as he can buy.
Shakespeare started out in life a poor boy with a limited education
and cheap suspenders, but by dnt of pluck and poor penmanship he &C.
quired so mitch recognition a a literary man that MI. Carnegie has IN
hesitahngly agreed to put in a coal chute and a game of authors.
Mr.. Carnegie has prepared a special speech, with fularn gestures,
tor the laying of the cornerstone. It will be a vigorous defense of
Shakespeares literary style and an earnest plea for his standing as an
original and of-hand thinker. 1t will be prompted purely by motives of
fairness to the man himself, and will be in part, viz:
Friends and Fellow Thinkers: We have met here this beautiful
day to hang a library on the brow of one whose more than average abA=
iy IS a writer is now questioned, methnIs, by but very few people. In
fact cannot standing here now at my good 6ve-foot-three with one
hand stabbed into the bosom of my 55inch vest and the other wander
ing ainlessly through space, I cannot; I say, call to mind a single per-
son now living who can write like Will could. He could jerk out the
tail feather of a medium-sized goose and write a whole play with it, in
Guiding instructions to the ushers when to start the applause, but I OPEN
ly defy anyone here within the sight of my voice to name a man now
extant who can write a whole play with one pen. All! Will, Will, you
are very, very immortal and if a creann-coored library with an Irish
janitor and a hardwood floor that will throw a mar the instant he gets
off his guard will add another coat or two of Immortality then, I say,
take a library on Andy.
"The more I read Wills stuff the better I like it, and I have re-
read his stories more than any other popular writer's. I read East
Lynne three times and wept like a hired girl every time, but I read
'Ophela' through six times and had started through the seventh but lost
my place. I have sat up many night and read Wormwood' and got so
excited that I forgot to wind the clock, but I have read J. J. Caesar in
Peace and in War; or Stabbed Once Too Often until I could almost
recte it from stem to stern for you here to-day. Beyond Pardon was a
wonderful story, but it sounded like a book written by a man with
malaria compared to 'Othe11o, the Mechanoy Dane Al, my friends, as
we amateur thinkers ponder over the pages of this man who in all of his
works never once msspeled a word or put in the wrong punctuation, we
certainly must feel that W IRE making no mistake in handing him a
library with al automatic clock and a sten-winding furnace.
Here was a man who could write a good story and put a wind-up to
it so that yU1 always knew whether the characters finally died of the
measles o r got work in a laundry. He did not get you into the most in
terestng part of the story and then I'll out of plot and chop off, and
leave you there to grope your way out IS best you could like so many
of Our story writers do. l have read stories that broke square off, right
at the point where they were so exciting that I wanted to shed my coat
and take a hand in the general mixup, fat and wheezy as I am. Only
the other night I hit the cat with a book that ended up at least IL years
before the story did. Wills pen never rn dry with the down-trodden
father still out in the blizzard, trying to find his way in from the barn.
He would kill a man and then bring back his ghost every Thursday even
ing to walk around with an old sheet over his head and quarrel with the
family. Will would tell you all about each character right down to the
last moment before OOnC to Dresc md then he would throw in few
lines about their future like a three-dolar clarvoyant. He never quit
with the main hero still in jail or up a tree, and he never left a man from
the country wandering about the streets of a great city at night, trying
to find his way back to the hotel.
"And so, I say, give the mar the honor that has sc long been due;
give him, l say, as I hit this speakers stand with my fist now for the
last time, give him, | say, a library worthy of his attainments, with
colonial door-mat and a nice place to set your umbrella n a rainy day.
Boys, this recognition, coming to Nh. Shakespeare, should teach you
that success always comes at last to those who strive to excel, and
though you may have to start Out in life a poor boy with a vest that has
grown too short for you in the waist, you a by dnt of perseverance
punctualty, percephhiy, perhnachy, perspnuhy, perspicaciousness and
penetrabiity win a death1ess library sooner or later.
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