The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-05-23

there was less of this, The old stone floor bore its credentials of authenticity on its face; battered and broken and disar- ranged, as if with score cs Titanic sledge-hammers. It Is difficult to under. stand how it could ever have been new. The low, whitewashed walls and ceilings, and the coarse and wretched stairway were simply revelation of discomfort, and up stairs it was almost as bad. The ceiling, if anything, is lower than below, and within such easy reach that not an inch of it has escaped the pencil of the ambitious tourist who goes up and down the world inscribing his name. We must speak more respectfully, suppose. of the glittering few who have plo Sed their way with diamonds into the small lead-set windows, for among them the autograph of Sir Walter. Scott is plainly discernible with little patience. You pass into part of the house that makes no claim to authenticity, having once been changed about entirely and used as pubic house, but is now devoted to the purposes of museum. Mixed with a good deal of rubbish there are here some few objects of considerable interest: Shakespeare's initial signet ring, the enormous size of which the good lady explained by saying that he wore it on his thumb copy or two of old and rare editions of his plays {; a chair in which he used to sit; poor Judith's "mark that stood fer her sig nature some autographic lines of very FOOT poetry by no less excellent poet than Wordsworth; letter of David Gar ricx; a cup from which the latter drank at the great Stratford festival; and an ori iginal letter asking for a loan, and written to the poet by his townsman Richard Quincy when that worthy had come up to London and perhaps been out with the boys. There was no auto graph of Shakespeare. though saw one afterwards at the British museum, and, though all right as far as they go, could not feel that these matters amounted to much as bearing upon our knowledge of Shakespeare and his days. The only marvel seemed that
 "Neither art thou the worse
 For this poor furniture and mean array"
 Shakespeare may have been born here, and he may not, but the possibility that genius could have been nurtured among such surroundings is food for reflection. Beyond this put no faith in the emotion which it is fashionable to profess, unless it be one of compassion for any form of human consciousness, be it poet or fool, which is condemned to such an abode.
 don't know that Pm altogether glad that saw it; for why our enj oyment of the bard should hinge in any way upon the circumstances of his birth is a a mystery which had counted upon my visit to solve. And now the solution is put away from me forever.
 had passed vacant corner, lot of perhaps 6oxI 90 feet, and noticed trim lawn with gravelly and serpentine walks, and, in front, what took to be hot-beds of some kind under glass, before learned by consulting my diagram that this was all that remained of New Place." the home of Shakespeare's maturer years, and the reputed place of his death. The
 traditions on which its interest depends are, however, too hay for absolute faith, and it is better to take it for what ii is worth than to press too closely for an abstract of title. The place is scrupu- lously tended, and a neat iron railing in- closes the alleged site of the original house itself having been removed by one Gastrell, clergyman and former owner, who seems to have preferred the execra- tions of guides and relic peddlers to the annoyances of continual visitors. Strat- fordites are not wanting, however, who declare that the house destroyed by Gastrell was not the Shakespeare house at all but later one occupying the same site, and even to profess cold skepticism about the mulberry tree; while others (with something else to show you) will seek to poison your mind with doubts about the whole affair. A young man stood on a step-ladder apparently pick. ing cherries, though they turned out to be mulberries, growing on what was said to be scion or the original tree. From gentle priestess of this particular shrine who showed me certain fragments of the brick foundation walls, carefully pre- served under glass (which had mis- taken for hot-beds). and tolerated no doubt as to their having been placed in their present position under the eye of the great dramatist himself; the moss grown well from which she raised the bucket and gave me to drink was, she assured me, the identical one at which the master used to slake his thirst in the morning after painting Bridge street red with John a-Combe, and the broken pipes, rusty razors, skittles, cooking uten- sils, etc., that were found upon the ground, ard that constituted her modest museum in the house adjoining, were displayed with simple faith that ad- mitted of no question.
 After all, thought, what could im- press us more deeply with the sublimity of the masters philosophy than this very scene of ruin, tergetfulness and oblitera- ton?
 The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous pal
 aces,
 The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which ii inherit, shall dissolve; And, like this ihsubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a wreck behind"