ford's
boundaries; scolding wives were sentenced to have their tempers
sweetened by immersion from the ducking-stool in the clear, cold waters
of Avon. Publicans were forced to conform to the local laws carefully
framed to abolish public drunkenness. The stocks were waiting for the
feet of drunkards, brawlers, and offenders against municipal
regulations, and the whipping-post was always in evidence where the
Market House now stands. Apprentices might not be out after nine o'clock
at night. Attendance at church was obligatory, and he who blasphemed or
used foul language found ample reason to regret his indiscretion. In
short, the conduct of Stratford was of a kind more in keeping with the
Puritan tradition than anything we can find in England to-day, but it
was associated with real brotherly love, and a feeling of common
citizenship, that held the town together. Those who have studied the
early records of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community in England
in the years following the successful intercession of Manasseh ben
Israel with Oliver Cromwell, will hardly fail to note the striking
similarity between the rules that governed Elizabethan corporations and
those that governed those Jews who returned to England and lived their
prosperous but dignified lives in the east end of London when the
eighteenth century was as young as our own.

=SHAKESPEARE'S HOUSE--STRATFORD-ON-AVON=

There was much to hold communities together in Elizabeth's time, much to
encourage strength of purpose and resignation to troubles that were
regarded as the manifestation of Divine Will, though in truth they were
fruits of the people's ignorance. Unfortunately there was no real
attempt to control them. Sanitation was unknown. The ground floors of
the houses were of hard clay, covered with rushes; chimneys were not
common. Refuse and garbage were placed in the open roads, not always in
the special places appointed by the corporation. Pigs were kept close to
the houses, and though the butchers were supposed to take the refuse of
the slaughter-houses beyond the town, a strong wind would doubtless
bring back infection. The corporation kept certain public places clean,
and doubtless the citizens, or the most of them, did their best; but
they had no knowledge of the price of uncleanliness, and in a town that
was unpaved, undrained, and seldom cleaned, microbes must have enjoyed
their life under conditions only familiar to those of us who have
t