“Know Shakspere? I was an actor once.”
I felt that I had him, for I know actors better than he knew Shakspere.
“Did you ever play Hamlet?” I asked, sitting up in bed.
“I did; and I made such a hit that if it hadn’t been for the venality of the press and my sense of honor, I would have been adjudged one of the greatest Hamlets of the day.”
“Give me the soliloquy. I give you my word that ordinarily I’d rather be robbed than hear it, but I like your voice and I believe that you can do it justice.”
A self-satisfied smile illuminated his face. He laid down the pipe and gave me the soliloquy, and it wasn’t bad.
“Bully!” I said, when he had finished. “Why, man, you make an indifferent thief, else you would have decamped long ago; but the stage has lost an actor that would have in time compelled the unwilling admiration of the press.”
And so I jollied him, and he gave me the trial scene from “The Merchant of Venice,” and other selections, until dawn began to show in the east, when he picked up his bag and said, “It would be a shame to rob a white man like you.” Then he bade me good-by and left.
And I congratulated myself upon my knowledge of human nature, until I began to dress, when I found that the fellow had finished his burgling before I woke, and he has all my silver.