The proprietor of the place stood by for a while saying nothing, then he came to my defence.

He said: "It looks like a mystery, gentlemen, but it isn't a mystery after it's explained.

That is a _grooved_ alley; you've only to start a ball down it any way you please and the groove will do the rest; it will slam the ball against the northeast curve of the head pin every time, and nothing can save the ten from going down." It was true.

The boys made the experiment and they found that there was no art that could send a ball down that alley and fail to score a ten-strike with it.

When I had told those boys that I knew nothing about that game I was speaking only the truth; but it was ever thus, all through my life: whenever I have diverged from custom and principle and uttered a truth, the rule has been that the hearer hadn't strength of mind enough to believe it.
[Sidenote: (1873.)] A quarter of a century ago I arrived in London to lecture a few weeks under the management of George Dolby, who had conducted the Dickens readings in America five or six years before.