The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-05-23
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Detroit Free Press.l

don't believe that Shakespeare ever ,ook a second-class car at bennington Er Stratford-upon- Avon in drizzsing yain. kicked a muddy yellow dog out of he carriage for running between his legs, maintained a heated controversy with the aoe,s owner as to the relations of quad ,uoeds to common carriers, and theL bought that mornings London Standard and read a cynical and beef-headed crit. ;cism on Mir. Wilson Barrett's scheme for inc revival of Hamlet" But if he did if is more than likely that he went home with wrath in his heart and water in his shoes. grumbled at his wife, boxed Iudith's ears, and after eating his dinner and soaking his feet, sat down and wrote the thirty-iouEth sonnet.
 But the hasty tourist must take nature as she comes and loss of temper is waste of time. Nature compromised and cleared up, and though the sun was not vet visible when the train reached Strat- ford, still the rain had ceased, and the skies wore an aspect of mild torbearance which was not without its touch of en- couragement.
 Some have found no beauty in the val lev of the Avon. If beauty mes ms only picturesque and precipitous diversi,ies of surface, striking contrasts and strange surprises, they are right but to me there is in the green fields and tangled hedges, in the idle cattle and quaint matched cottages, the beauty of the repose and peaceful thrift, and the winding Avon, touching the picture here and there with gleam of silver, completes the sugges- ton of idyllic rest.
 don't know why, but somehow had always thought of Stratford as bit of a hamlet struggling along an uneven and muddy country road, with broad. faced peasants in long smock frocks smoking at their gates, or idling at sundown over their mugs of ale on roadside benches near the village inn. What found was the inevitable little brick station, spick and span with foliage plants and bloom ing things, and passing through the other platform pair of halfgrown yellow em- nibuses, that made me think of humble bees, bsz1ingly assertive of the rival claims of the Shakespeare and the Red Horse hotels. Opposite the eye as you looked in at the door of the latter was a placard to the effect that "Americans Wl1 kCAnCkAUGk SAG INC4 11OLSG 6S bu6 HUH made famous by Washington Irving" Good gracious l thought, is nothing sa- cred? Is the pride of the peripatetic and credulous American your first and only motive to existence on this classic ground ? It's enough to make fellow turn around and go back. Confound you, why don't you come out and steal-ike men? But l went peacefully up to the Red Horse just the same (perhaps so-called for the English reason that it is a "bloody charger), and our way lay over finely paved streets, with gas lamps, rows of modern looking stores, and all the move. ment and action of large country town at home. was deposited in the centre of long row of two story buildings, seemingly of brick that had been painted or plastered gray. There was no en- trance that suggested hotel, but a sort of tunneled driveway led through into the interior of the block, and exploring this found at the right the coffee room and at the left the other essential and component parts of the chargers anat- omy. Anyone familiar with the illus trated sketch-book could never mistake the little parlor where Washington Irving took his ease in his inn. The square table, the hospitable grate and even the picture of the horse and rider on the wall he has seen before. The other half of the same OK that partially ate yester- day at Warwick was awaiting me in the coffee-room, and it was pleasant to feel that Irving had eaten its ancestor.
 Ssratford was in hustle of preparation that day. The annual exhibition or "fair" of the Warwickshire Agricultural Society began there on the morrow, and the fronts of public houses and other places of bus mess were being decorated with bonghs and evergreens, and the accommodations at the hotels were all engaged.
 had talked with people living eight or ten miles away who, in residence sf twenty years, had pever been at Stratford. wondered at it them, but began to un- derstand 1t now. This fair tomorrow was more to these people than all the poetry of the Elizabethan age. Busy there, as we are here, with their nineteenth cen tury hopes, joys, cares and aspirations, the sixteenth century and it's legends, its romances, its history and its associations, seemed as remote to them as to us. This Shakespeare business is all very we'll. They accept it with the rest as one of the elements of their livelihood-an absurd pretext upon which 1t has pleased an in- scrutable Providence to send down among them a continuous stream of American idiots, with gold, frankincense and myrrh. The tribute finds welcome enough, but the pretext excites only sort of an amused and ill-tempered disdain. So thoroughly does this sentiment pervade the atmosphere that am afraid was little ashamed of myself as passed down Henley street to the birthplace" was an object of whitening and intolerant contempt and no amount of philosophy can render this sensation exactly com fortable. It is right to say, however, that Stratford is not without it's admirers of the bard ]; there are not perhaps as many of them there as there are in other civil ized places of equal size, for the accident of locality seems rather to retard than c