Dorothy’s Walk, shaded by noble old trees, leads to the massive flights of marble steps, down which she hurried with beatin’ heart and flyin’ steps to meet her lover, Sir John Manners, while her friends were merry-makin’ in another part of the Hall, and never dreamed of her flight.
Haddon Hall by this means passed into the family of Rutland, who lived here till the first of this century. The Duke of Rutland keeps the place in its ancient form, much to the delight of those who love the old ways.
CHAPTER XVII.
JOSIAH HAS AN ADVENTURE.
Wall, Martin, who sometimes changes his mind, but don’t think he duz, always a-sayin’ that it shows weak-mindedness and is a trait belongin’ to wimmen (which I never feel like disputin’, knowin’ that my sect has in time past been known to be whifflin’; but so have men, too)—so it didn’t surprise me much when he said that instead of proceedin’ directly to the Lake District from here he thought we would go first to the home of Shakespeare. Sez he:
“I may be called to London any minute on business, and I feel that it will be expected of me to visit Shakespeare’s birthplace anyway.”
Sez Martin, with a thumb in both vest pockets, and a benine, patronizin’ look on his liniment—
“Shakespeare wrote a number of very creditable productions, and though I never had the time to spare from more important things to peruse his works—poems, I believe, mostly—yet I always love to encourage talent. I think it is becoming for solid men, for progressive, practical men, to encourage writers to a certain extent; and Shakespeare, as I am aware, has been very much talked of. I would be sorry to miss the chance of saying to those who inquire of me that I had been there, so I believe we will proceed there at once.”
“Wall,” I sez, “I shall be glad enough to go;” and Al Faizi looked tickled, too. He had read him, he said, in his own country.
And sez he to me, with his dark eyes all lit up, “To read Shakespeare is like looking into clear water and seeing your own face reflected in it, and earth, and mountain top, and over all the Heavens. And it is more than that,” sez he, “it is looking into the human mind and reading all its secrets—all the wonder and mystery of the soul; it is like looking at life, and death, and eternity.”