He wuz dretful riz up in his mind a-talkin’ about it, and he quoted Shakespeare quite often on our way to Stratford, and always in the right place, and he is generally so still, that I see, indeed, how he felt about him. Alice talked, too, quite a good deal about Shakespeare. And Al Faizi listened. Yes, he listened to Alice—poor creeter! And everybody blind as a bat but jest me.
Wall, we got there anon or a little before, and put up to the Red Horse Inn, a quaint, old-fashioned tarvern, but where we had everything for our comfort, and wuz waited on by as pretty a red-cheeked girl as I want to see.
A quaint, old-fashioned tarvern.
A sight of emotions wuz rousted up in me as I sot in that tarvern, or walked through its old-fashioned, low-ceiled rooms and meditated on who had been under its ruff.
When rare Ben Jonson, and Drayton, and Garrick, and all of Shakespeare’s friends come down from London to visit him, of course they stopped here, and of course Shakespeare himself often and often come here—mebby too often for Miss Shakespeare’s feelin’s.
Much as I honor Shakespeare, I have to admit that he did stimulate a little too much—but, then, who hain’t got their failin’s? Why, Solomon, the very wisest man, had more wives than he ort to had.
Seein’, I spoze, that we wuz Americans, our supper that first night wuz served in Washington Irving’s room, as they call the room that he occupied, our own genial wit and poet. Mebby his words didn’t come in rhyme, but they had the soul of poetry, and quaint, sly wit, and good sense and good manners and everything.
I always sot store by Washington Irving. (I had got acquainted with him through Thomas J.)
Alice quoted a lot from Irving, and a lot from Shakespeare, while we wuz to the table, and I felt their presence in my heart.