[Illustration:  Old cottage at Norton, near Evesham.

From Water Color by G.F.  Nicholls.]

British Highways and Byways From a Motor Car

I

A FEW GENERALITIES

Stratford-on-Avon stands first on the itinerary of nearly every American who proposes to visit the historic shrines of Old England.  Its associations with Britain’s immortal bard and with our own gentle Geoffrey Crayon are not unfamiliar to the veriest layman, and no fewer than thirty thousand pilgrims, largely from America, visit the delightful old town each year.  And who ever came away disappointed?  Who, if impervious to the charm of the place, ever dared to own it?

My first visit to Stratford-on-Avon was in the regulation fashion.  Imprisoned in a dusty and comfortless first-class apartment—­first-class is an irony in England when applied to railroad travel, a mere excuse for charging double—­we shot around the curves, the glorious Warwickshire landscapes fleeting past in a haze or obscured at times by the drifting smoke.  Our reveries were rudely interrupted by the shriek of the English locomotive—­like an exaggerated toy whistle—­and, with a mere glimpse of town and river, we were brought sharply up to the unattractive station of Stratford-on-Avon.  We were hustled by an officious porter into an omnibus, which rattled through the streets until we landed at the Sign of the Red Horse; and the manner of our departure was even the same.

Just two years later, after an exhilarating drive of two or three hours over the broad, well-kept highway winding through the parklike fields, fresh from May showers, between Worcester and Stratford, our motor finally climbed a long hill, and there, stretched out before us, lay the valley of the Avon.  Far away we caught the gleam of the immortal river, and rising from a group of splendid trees we beheld Trinity Church—­almost unique in England for its graceful combination of massive tower and slender spire—­the literary shrine of the English-speaking world, the enchanted spot where Shakespeare sleeps.  About it were clustered the clean, tiled roofs of the charming town, set like a gem in the Warwickshire landscape, famous as the most beautiful section of Old England.  Our car slowed to a stop, and only the subdued hum of the motor broke the stillness as we saw Stratford-on-Avon from afar, conscious of a beauty and sentiment that made our former visit seem commonplace indeed.

But I am not going to write of Stratford-on-Avon.  Thousands have done this before me—­some of them of immortal fame.  I shall not attempt to describe or give details concerning a town that is probably visited each year by more people than any other place of the size in the world.  I am simply striving in a few words to give the different impressions made upon the same party who visited the town twice in a comparatively short period, the first time by railway train and the last by motor car.  If I have anything to say of Stratford, it will come in due sequence in my story.