Chapter 1

Scattered here and there through the stacks of unpublished
manuscript which constitute this formidable Autobiography and Diary
of mine, certain chapters will in some distant future be found
which deal with "Claimants"--claimants historically notorious:
Satan, Claimant; the Golden Calf, Claimant; the Veiled Prophet of
Khorassan, Claimant; Louis XVII., Claimant; William Shakespeare,
Claimant; Arthur Orton, Claimant; Mary Baker G. Eddy, Claimant--and
the rest of them. Eminent Claimants, successful Claimants,
defeated Claimants, royal Claimants, pleb Claimants, showy
Claimants, shabby Claimants, revered Claimants, despised Claimants,
twinkle starlike here and there and yonder through the mists of
history and legend and tradition--and oh, all the darling tribe are
clothed in mystery and romance, and we read about them with deep
interest and discuss them with loving sympathy or with rancorous
resentment, according to which side we hitch ourselves to. It has
always been so with the human race. There was never a Claimant
that couldn't get a hearing, nor one that couldn't accumulate a
rapturous following, no matter how flimsy and apparently
unauthentic his claim might be. Arthur Orton's claim that he was
the lost Tichborne baronet come to life again was as flimsy as Mrs.
Eddy's that she wrote Science and Health from the direct dictation
of the Deity; yet in England near forty years ago Orton had a huge
army of devotees and incorrigible adherents, many of whom remained
stubbornly unconvinced after their fat god had been proven an
impostor and jailed as a perjurer, and to-day Mrs. Eddy's following
is not only immense, but is daily augmenting in numbers and
enthusiasm. Orton had many fine and educated minds among his
adherents, Mrs. Eddy has had the like among hers from the
beginning. Her church is as well equipped in those particulars as
is any other church. Claimants can always count upon a following,
it doesn't matter who they are, nor what they claim, nor whether
they come with documents or without. It was always so. Down out
of the long-vanished past, across the abyss of the ages, if you
listen you can still hear the believing multitudes shouting for
Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Simnel.

A friend has sent me a new book, from England--The Shakespeare
Problem Restated--well restated and closely reasoned; and my fifty
years' interest in that matter--asleep for the last three years--is
excited once more. It is an interest which was born of Delia
Bacon's book--away back in that ancient day--1857, or maybe 1856.
About a year later my pilot-master, Bixby, transferred me from his
own steamboat to the Pennsylvania, and placed me under the orders
and instructions of George Ealer--dead now, these many,