Yes. I've been to Stratford onto the Avon, the Birthplace of Shakspeare. Mr. S. is now no more. He's been dead over three hundred (300) years. The peple of his native town are justly proud of him. They cherish his mem'ry, and them as sell pictures of his birthplace, &c., make it prof'tible cherishin it. Almost everybody buys a pictur to put into their Albiom.
As I stood gazing on the spot where Shakspeare is s'posed to have fell down on the ice and hurt hisself when a boy, (this spot cannot be bought—the town authorities say it shall never be taken from Stratford), I wondered if three hundred years hence picturs of MY birthplace will be in demand? Will the peple of my native town be proud of me in three hundred years? I guess they won't short of that time because they say the fat man weighing 1000 pounds which I exhibited there was stuffed out with pillers and cushions, which he said one very hot day in July, "Oh bother, I can't stand this," and commenced pullin the pillers out from under his weskit, and heavin 'em at the audience. I never saw a man lose flesh so fast in my life. The audience said I was a pretty man to come chiselin my own townsmen in that way. I said, "Do not be angry, feller-citizens. I exhibited him simply as a work of art. I simply wished to show you that a man could grow fat without the aid of cod-liver oil." But they wouldn't listen to me. They are a low and grovelin set of peple, who excite a feelin of loathin in every brest where lorfty emotions and original idees have a bidin place.
I stopped at Leamington a few minits on my way to Stratford onto the Avon, and a very beautiful town it is. I went into a shoe shop to make a purchis, and as I entered I saw over the door those dear familiar words, "By Appintment: H.R.H.;" and I said to the man, "Squire, excuse me, but this is too much. I have seen in London four hundred boot and shoe shops by Appintment: H.R.H.; and now YOU'RE at it. It is simply onpossible that the Prince can wear 400 pairs of boots. Don't tell me," I said, in a voice choked with emotion—"Oh, do not tell me that you also make boots for him. Say slippers—say that you mend a boot now and then for him; but do not tell me that you make 'em reg'lar for him."
The man smilt, and said I didn't understand these things. He said I perhaps had not noticed in London that dealers in all sorts of articles was By Appintment. I said, "Oh, HADN'T I?" Then a sudden thought flasht over me. "I have it!" I said. "When the Prince walks through a street, he no doubt looks at the shop windows."
The man said, "No doubt."
"And the enterprisin tradesman," I continnerd, "the moment the Prince gets out of sight, rushes frantically and has a tin sign painted, By Appintment, H.R.H.! It is a beautiful, a great idee!"
I then bought a pair of shoe strings, and wringin the shopman's honest hand, I started for the Tomb of Shakspeare in a hired fly. It look't however more like a spider.
"And this," I said, as I stood in the old church-yard at
Stratford, beside a Tombstone, "this marks the spot where lies
William W. Shakspeare. Alars! and this is the spot where—"
"You've got the wrong grave," said a man—a worthy villager:
"Shakspeare is buried inside the church."
"Oh," I said, "a boy told me this was it." The boy larfed and put the shillin I'd given him onto his left eye in a inglorious manner, and commenced moving backwards towards the street.