The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-08-23
rALsrArr AND HIS FRIENDS.
iNex York Gr.phic.l

"Of all the charactezs ever drawn by pe4Qpene1 -not on Ia so impressed itssk - tho pspalar kncy q Faistaif.
 So said weil knewn Shakesoearean student recently, chatting of plays and playes, back even to Wills days of the globe on the bankside, all of nutty and a pleasant flavor.
 "Falstaf is scarcely to be considered as . cxsature of the fancy" he continued. but as real flesh and blood, as he walled and talked, according to Shakes- peare, wifh Hal and Poins in Dame Quiekiys famei hoste;ry, tn the Esst Cheape, and with those cut-purse scape- graces who fed on his bounty. people don't want to think of jolly old ack as a man in buckram. He is so full of a hearty, responsive realism As 10 be real Meshed in the buck haslEet and making contYaband love te the two merry wives in Windsor town or dancing under duress in the shadow of Herne's oak. lack IS wild sport enough, but it is horse play cooked up to order to make that giddy old Queen Bess and her not over modest maios of honor laugh. It is not the hero of Cadshill, the live Falstaff of Henry w. carrying of the dead Hotspur from the Geld of Shrewsbury, taking his ease in his inn, dallying with plump Doll Tearsheet of the stews, lording 1t over Bardolph and Pistol and Nym, snoring lustily behind the arras, or throwing his heel taps into the face of Francis, the drawer, marry, because the sack had lime in it. There never was anything % life like drawn as Falstat:,, and there never will be-"
 Somebody mentioned Irving's sketch of "The BoArs Head in rhe Cheape.-
 Exactly. Nobody believed more de- voutly in the individuality of lack Fal- staff than Washington Irving. He vas filled with the quai1. old English spirit the present day men call it sentiment. You remember how he went somewhere to an out of the way cuddy hole of a street in old-fashioned London to ind out something about an old tobacco box. It had picture on the lid of Hal and Falstaff and pack of roysterers cutting up high jinks in front of the Boar $ Head. If Irving had not believed in Falstaff he would not have taken all sha. trouble. Dreaming. Of course i, was dreaming, but can all the millions of the universe buy the scholarly happiness of such dreams! will tell yor something which hangs gracefully to that idea, Fai- staffian and crisp. A friend of mine was in London and he picked up tha; same sketch of the Boar's Head. He was a dreamer and 1t caught him, too, of course, probably for the hundredfh time, and the thought suddenly possesssd him being on the spot, to @ where Washing ton Irving had been dirty yenxs before. Pleasant conceit wasn't hi He had no more doubt-bsing under the glamour of Will Shakespeare's genius-of walking round the cosneE into Cheapside and finding the Boar's Head sign swinging under the overhanging eavss; of seeing Hosess Quickly in tke bar, of herring Frzncis call out anon, anon, sir,' to Bar dolph and his sang Of jail birds, than he had of messing with descendant of Mistress Tearsheet on his way through the Strand back to Charing Gross. The Shakespeasean spirit possessed him. He could not break the spell. He did not want to break it. He clung to it as to fascination. He only wanted to be left alone with his dream-to go up into the Dolphin Chamber. to sit down in glorious old lack Fals&affs chair and look into the pea coal fire, while Hostess Quickly told tearfully how the old knigh, went away an it had been any Christom child. at turning Q the tide, fumbling with the sheets, playing with flowers and babbling of green 6e3ds.' To feel this is the spirit which leads pilgrim-footed deariness to the time-eahen shrines of the mothenand and, after all, it is worth something to have great-great-grandfathers.
 But let us go back to our own Wash ington Irving. My frisnd s,rolled to where Mr. irving had been thirty years before to . little old-fashioned public house by the Thames side. Irving did not 6nd the Boar's Head, cr Mad Hal, or FalstaG nor any touch Of eithe, but the spirit of the old hoste1ry of the CheaPe vas on him and of the ghosts that Shakespeare raised up to live for- ever. Instead of the Dolphin Chamber he found tsp-fo0m with sanded floor and . buxom girl filled the place of Francis: instead of Dame Quickly a comely, round hossess dispensed Rin and boer h lieu cf sack Where Bar- dolph mine Ancient Pistol, Nym and the ether lads of ths mooa might have sat there was only shady old party in q sou'weseR. Thee and . leg. of south down 4sesan revolving iueily ea a spit told e in w1y to mahe your mouth waaoE, wogo all. But vho could have doeS k sov1l as Irving: Charles Lamb, peika1a Djckens would have mOthGed it inE pun conceitsL fu au that paper the i.rG1G3ea of . Shakspeassan en- thusiasm crops out in every sentence. Irving wAs dreamer.
 But thirsy years had worked changes in brick and mortar. There was no sign or outward thought of wha: had been in Irving's time when my friend went there. The march of progress had been onward, and there vas Iss of Fals&af and his friends and the haunts that might have been thsin than esex. The quaint old