Most accusations contain a certain basis of truth, but they may be no less libels on that account. One zealous advocate, intent on loving his supposed enemy, printed a thrilling story about Ingersoll being taken prisoner during the war, while taking refuge in a pig-pen. To this some of Bob's friends interposed a fierce rejoinder declaring that Bob stood like Falstaff at Gadshill and fought the rogues in buckram to a standstill.
Heaven forfend me from my friends—I can withstand mine enemies alone!
I am quite ready to believe that Bob, being attacked by an overwhelming force, suddenly bethought him of an engagement, and made a swift run for safety. The impeccable man who has never done a cowardly thing, nor a mean thing, is no kinsman of mine! The saintly hero who has not had his heels run away with his head, and sought safety in a friendly pig-pen—aye! and filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat—has dropped something out of his life that he will have to go back for and pick up in another incarnation. We love men for their limitations and weaknesses, no less than for their virtues. A fault may bring a man very close to us. Have we, too, not sought safety in pig-pens! The people who taunt other people with having taken temporary refuge in a pig-pen are usually those who live in pig-pens the whole year 'round.
The one time in the life of Savonarola when he comes nearest to us is when his tortured flesh wrenched from his spirit a recantation. And who can forget that cry of Calvary, "My God, my God! Why hast thou forsaken me!" That call for help, coming to us across twenty centuries, makes the man, indeed, our Elder Brother.
And let it here be stated that even Bob's bitterest foe never declared that the man was a coward by nature, nor that the business of his life was hiding in pig-pens. The incident named was exceptional and therefore noteworthy; let us admit it, at least not worry ourselves into a passion denying it. Let us also stipulate the truth that Bob could never quite overcome the temptation to take an unfair advantage of his opponent in an argument. He laid the fools by the heels and suddenly, 'gainst all the rules of either Roberts or Queensbury.
To go after the prevaricators, and track them to their holes, is to make much of little, and lift the liars into the realm of equals. This story of the pig-pen I never heard of until Ingersoll's friends denied it in a book.
Just one instance to show how trifles light as air are to the zealous confirmation strong as holy writ. In April, Eighteen Hundred Ninety-four, Ingersoll lectured at Utica, New York. The following Sunday a local clergyman denounced the lecturer as a sensualist, a gourmand—one totally indifferent to decency and the feelings and rights of others. Then the preacher said, "At breakfast in this city last Thursday, Ingersoll ordered everything on the bill of fare, and then insulted and roundly abused the waiter-girl because she did not bring things that were not in the hotel."
I happened to be present at that meal. It was an "early-train breakfast," and the bill of fare for the day had not been printed. The girl came in, and standing at the Colonel's elbow, in genuine waiter-girl style, mumbled this: "Ham and eggs, mutton-chops, beefsteak, breakfast bacon, codfish balls and buckwheat cakes."
And Bob solemnly said: "Ham and eggs, mutton-chops, beefsteak, breakfast bacon, codfish balls and buckwheat cakes."
In amazement the girl gasped, "What?" And then Bob went over it backward: "Buckwheat cakes, codfish balls, breakfast bacon, beefsteak, mutton-chops, and ham and eggs."