Upon the whole I was glad not to have the company of the great poet on the way to Shottery, whither we drove that afternoon. The difficulty of conversing with a disembodied spirit while driving with people still of our earthly minority is considerable; the lightning changes from mortal to immortal is what ladies call nerve-racking; and the anxiety not to lose anything that such a spirit as Shakespeare might say must result in an inattention to the others which would seem impolite to say the least.

It is an easy walk from Stratford to Shottery, but the drive is still easier, and by a road pleasanter, I think, than the foot-path across the fields which Shakespeare probably took when he went wooing Anne Hathaway. We ought now to have thought of that courtship, but if the truth must be told we were amusing ourselves unworthily enough in counting up the number of perambulators which so abound in Stratford, and which seemed all to be taking their way that afternoon to Shottery, as if they too were going to Anne Hathaway's cottage. I forget how many there were by the time we reached the curving streets of the hamlet, but before we got out of Stratford there were twenty-one, sometimes with twins in them, all preparing in one way or other to make their living off the memory of their mighty townsman; for I do not suppose there was a baby among them so ungrateful as to believe in the Baconian authorship.

Shottery streets are curving, and of a rustic prettiness, with sincere Kate Greenway cottages set practicable behind little gardens, after you get away from the suburban trimness of the houses nearest Stratford. Sincere and practicable as the rest, with the largest and brightest of the little gardens, the Anne Hathaway cottage was instantly recognizable by the throngs of sight-seers within and about its gates. The sight-seers were instantly recognizable, in the vast majority as American girls, waiting their turn in faintly sarcastic patience to be admitted to the cottage, and joking or at least smiling together, at other American girls who packed its doorways. Their sarcastic patience was the national mood in which we Americans face most problems of life, and it commended them, somehow, more than the varying expression of the other visitors arriving in huge motor-omnibus loads, and by carriage and automobile and on foot from every part of the world. In a way the spectacle was preposterous; but the afternoon was beautiful, and the cottage stood unconscious amidst its flowery creepers, looking gently from its latticed windows at the multitude and drawing its thatch over its eaves in a sort of tolerant surprise. In its simple memories of the courtship which had so amazingly consecrated it, one could imagine also a dismay at the outcome, such as poor Anne Hathaway herself must have felt if she had been there. It was her home and her people's home, and they too might well have been bewildered at such a far effect from her marriage with the rather wild young Shakespeare lad whose family was certainly no better than hers, and who had not behaved too well, though as things went in that day and place no worse than many others. One could fancy an irreconcilable feeling in the place, as the dense crowd pushed from room to room, and up-stairs and down, and elbowed and gasped and perspired and tried for some personal significance to each in their presence there. None could have denied that the custodians who led from room to room and delivered the crowd over from one to another did their intelligent best to realize this for them. For myself I felt an appeal in it which I could not well express. The decency of the whole place, with the propriety of the furnishings, mostly typical, of course, rather than original, but to me somehow recalling the simplicities of the new American country where I had seen like things in old pioneer dwellings, was touching. It was much to be shown an illustrative rushlight, and how, when it was crossed, one might bum the candle at both ends, as the proverb says; and it was much to see a rush bed, with the mattress resting on the rope webbing, familiar to me from the many movings of my childhood, when the cords had to be trodden and tightened into a reluctant elasticity by the paternal foot.

I was expecting throughout the presence which it seemed to me ought to make itself sensible, there, and when we came to that room where there is a rude settle built into the chimney-place, and our cicerone said, "This is where the young people used to do most of their courting," I felt in the words, few and simple, the thrill of a pathos imperishable as the soul itself, the richness of the race's experience of youth and love, not alienable by circumstance or eflfaceable by death itself.

"Now, surely," I thought, "he will act upon the hint," but then instantly I felt the vulgarity of my expectation. It was not of Anne Hathaway, his sweetheart, that Shakespeare would have spoken there as he had once spoken of Anne his aging wife; or make this the occasion of defending her fame against his own. Doubtless this was his tacit way of fulfilling his half promise to be with me at Shottery; he was making me divine the case for myself. I joined the mass of humanity descending the stairs in bulk, and separating its crumpled particles in a recovered severalty where those American girls sat smiling ironically but resolutely waiting to appropriate our experience.

In Shottery there is a tea-garden prettily called after Portia, and to this we went thirsting for her promptest brew, which was served us in one of her pleached bowers of plum-trees weighed down by their purple burden of victorias. We found ourselves very hungry as well as thirsty, and ordered jam with the bread and butter which comes by nature with tea in England; but the jam was a mistake. Almost as soon as it cam<e a swarm of yellowjackets came and proposed sharing it with us. This is what the English yellow-jackets always do; but it seemed as if the Portia kept swarms of them, to let loose upon ignorant strangers and frighten them into surrendering the jam which they have ordered and must pay for. The plan, if it was a plan, succeeded perfectly in our case. The yellow-jackets swooped upon us, and we instantly called to have the jam taken away, but even with the removal of the jam the yellow-jackets did not go; they remained humming and buzzing, and demanding explanations which we were not able to give. Then they possessed themselves of our bread and butter, and even threatened our tea, which we had to gulp hastily and as it were by stealth. We feared they might follow us to our fly, but our rout seemed to bewilder them; and we left them darkly murmuring in the air above our table after we paid and fled.

"A little more of this," I said, as we drove out of Shottery, while the over-laden motorbusses passed earthquakingly by us, "a little more, and I shall begin to believe in the Bacon authorship."