ould be so great seemed passing strange to
Nick, he felt so soon at home with him. It seemed as if the master-maker
of plays had a magic way of going out to and about the people he met,
and of fitting his humor to them as though he were a glover with their
measure in his hand.

With Nick he was nothing all day long but a jolly, wise, and
gentle-hearted boy, wearing his greatness like an old cloth coat, as if
it were a long-accustomed thing, and quite beyond all pride, and went
about his business in a very simple way. But in the evening when the
wits were met together at his house, and Nick sat on the hindmost bench
and watched the noble gentlemen who came to listen to the sport, Master
Will Shakspere seemed to have the knack of being ever best among them
all, yet of never too much seeming to be better than the rest.

And though, for the most part, he said but little, save when some pet
fancy moved him, when he did speak his conversation sparkled like a
little meadow brook that drew men's best thoughts out of them like
water from a spring.

And when they fell to bantering, he could turn the fag-end of another
man's nothing to good account in a way so shrewd that not even Master
Ben Jonson could better him--and Master Ben Jonson set up for a wit. But
Master Shakspere came about as quickly as an English man-of-war, dodged
here and there on a breath of wind, and seemed quite everywhere at once;
while Master Jonson tacked and veered, and loomed across the elements
like a great galleon, pouring forth learned broadsides with a most
prodigious boom, riddling whatever was in the way, to be sure, but often
quite missing the point--because Master Shakspere had come about, hey,
presto, change! and was off with the argument, point and all, upon a
totally different tack.

Then "Tush!" and "Fie upon thee, Will!" Master Jonson would cry with his
great bluff-hearted laugh, "thou art a regular flibbertigibbet! I'll
catch thee napping yet, old heart, and fill thee so full of pepper-holes
that thou wilt leak epigrams. But quits--I must be home, or I shall
catch it from my wife. Faith, Will, thou shouldst see my little Ben!"

"I'll come some day," Master Shakspere would say; "give him my love";
and his mouth would smile, though his eyes were sad, for his own son
Hamnet was dead.

Then, when the house was still again, and all had said good-by, Nick
doffed his clothes and laid him down to sleep in peace. Yet he often
wakened in the nig