A mild buzz of protest rose about him.  Kennaston smiled and cocked his head on one side.

“We have, for example,” he pointed out, “a large number of proverbs, the small coin of conversation, received everywhere, whose value no one disputes.  They are rapped forth, like an oath, with an air of settling the question once and forever.  Well! there is safety in quotations.  But even the Devil can cite Shakespeare for his purpose.  ‘Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day’ agrees ill with ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof’; and it is somewhat difficult to reconcile ’Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves’ with the equally familiar ’Penny-wise, pound-foolish.’  Yet the sayings are equally untrue; any maxim is, perforce, a general statement, and therefore fallacious, and therefore universally accepted.  Art is long, and life is short, but the platitudes concerning them are both insufferable and eternal.  We must remember that a general statement is merely a snap-shot at flying truth, an instantaneous photograph of a moving body.  It may be the way that a thing is; but it is never the way in which any one ever saw that thing, or ever will.  This is, of course, a general statement.

“As to present events, then, it may be assumed that no one is either capable or desirous of speaking the truth; why, then, make such a pother about it as to the past?  There we have carried the investigation of truth to such an extreme that nowadays very few of us dare believe anything.  Opinions are difficult to secure when a quarter of an hour in the library will prove either side of any question.  Formerly, people had a few opinions, which, if erroneous, were at least universal.  Nero was not considered an immaculate man.  The Flood was currently believed to have caused the death of quite a number of persons.  And George Washington, it was widely stated, once cut down a cherry-tree.  But now all these comfortable illusions have been destroyed by ’the least little men who spend their time and lose their wits in chasing nimble and retiring truth, to the extreme perturbation and drying up of the moistures.’”

Kennaston looked up for a moment, and Billy Woods, who had counted seven wrinkles and was dropping into a forlorn doze, started violently.  His interest then became abnormal.

“There are,” Mr. Kennaston complained, rather reproachfully, “too many inquiries, doubts, investigations, discoveries, and apologies.  There are palliations of Tiberius, eulogies of Henry VIII., rehabilitations of Aaron Burr.  Lucretia Borgia, it appears, was a grievously misunderstood woman, and Heliogabalus a most exemplary monarch; even the dog in the manger may have been a nervous animal in search of rest and quiet.  As for Shakespeare, he was an atheist, a syndicate, a lawyer’s clerk, an inferior writer, a Puritan, a scholar, a nom de plume, a doctor of medicine, a fool, a poacher, and another man of the same name.  Information of this sort crops up on every side.  Even the newspapers are infected; truth lurks in the patent-medicine advertisements, and sometimes creeps stealthily into the very editorials.  We must all learn the true facts of history, whether we will or no; eventually, the writers of historical romance will not escape.