Yes. I’ve been to Stratford onto the Avon, the Birth-place of Shakespeare. 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 picturs of his birth-place, &c., make it prof’tible cherishin’ it. Almost everybody buys a pictur to put into their Albiom.
“And this,” I said, as I stood in the old churchyard at Stratford, beside a Tombstone, “this marks the spot where lies William W. Shakespeare. Alars! and this is the spot where—”
“You’ve got the wrong grave,” said a man—a worthy villager; “Shakespeare 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 into his left eye in a inglorious manner, and commenced moving backwards towards the street.
I pursood and captered him, and, after talking to him a spell in a sarkastic stile, I let him went.
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford in 1564. All the commentators, Shakesperian scholars, etsetry, are agreed on this, which is about the only thing they are agreed on in regard to him, except that his mantle hasn’t fallen onto any poet or dramatist hard enough to hurt said poet or dramatist much. And there is no doubt if these commentators and persons continner investigatin’ Shakespeare’s career, we shall not in doo time, know anything about it at all. When a mere lad little William attended the Grammar School, because, as he said, the Grammar School wouldn’t attend him. This remarkable remark coming from one so young and inexperunced, set peple to thinkin’ there might be something in this lad. He subsequently wrote Hamlet and George Barnwell. When his kind teacher went to London to accept a position in the offices of the Metropolitan Railway, little William was chosen by his fellow-pupils to deliver a farewell address. “Go on, sir,” he said, “in a glorous career. Be like a eagle, and soar, and the soarer you get the more we shall be gratified! That’s so.”
HENRY WHEELER SHAW.
(“JOSH BILLINGS.”)