under glass. It began with these
lines:--

"The house of Shakspeare's birth we here may see;
That of his death we find without a trace.
Vain the inquiry, for immortal he"--

Here the poet seemed to pause as though the literary work was not
satisfactory; he drew his pen across what he had written, and under it
wrote the following stanza:--

"Of mighty Shakspeare's birth the room we see;
That where he died, in vain to find we try.
Useless the search, for, all immortal he:
And those who are immortal never die."

The effort furnishes a curious illustration of the methods of a poet's
mind in careful composition.

Back of the house is a garden, in which grew the old English flowers
that are portrayed by the poet in his dramas.

From the house the party went to the cottage of Anne Hathaway,
Shakspeare's wife, whom he loved in youth when life's bright ways lay
fair before him. It is a house which is mainly noticeable for its
simplicity.

"There is the place where he sat when he came to see his sweetheart,"
said the old lady who showed the house.

Shakspeare and his wife sleep in the same beautiful church amid the
bowery town of Stratford-on-Avon; and thither, rowing up the Avon
almost to the churchyard, our tourists made their way.

The party approached the church through an avenue of limes, and
entered the richly-carved oak doors of the Gothic porch. The tomb of
Shakspeare is in the chancel. The Avon runs but a short distance from
the walls, and the cool boughs of the summer trees wave before the
windows. A flat stone marks the place where the poet is buried, on
which are inscribed the oft quoted lines said to be written by the
poet himself:--

"Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here!
Blest be the spade that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones."

Over the grave, in a niche of the wall, is a bust of the poet. The
inscription mentions his age as fifty-three years.

[Illustration: ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE.]

Returning to the birthplace, Frank Gray and Tommy Toby visited the
Shakspeare Museum. The collection of curiosities was somewhat
comical,--such for example as a phial containing _juice_ from
mulberries gathered from Shakspeare's mulberry-tree; Shakspeare's jug,
from which Garrick sipped wine at the Jubilee in 1769. Frank seemed to
enjoy the specimens, his mind poetically associating them with bygone
scenes.