The Chinese have a punishment which consists simply in keeping the subject of it awake, by the constant teasing of a succession of individuals employed for the purpose.  The best of our social pleasures, if carried beyond the natural power of physical and mental endurance, begin to approach the character of such a penance.  After this we got a little rest; did some mild sight-seeing, heard some good music, called on the Max Muellers, and bade them good-by with the warmest feeling to all the members of a household which it was a privilege to enter.  There only remained the parting from our kind entertainer, the Vice-Chancellor, who added another to the list of places which in England and Scotland were made dear to us by hospitality, and are remembered as true homes to us while we were under their roofs.

On the second day of July we left the Vice-Chancellor’s, and went to the Randolph Hotel to meet our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Willett, from Brighton, with whom we had an appointment of long standing.  With them we left Oxford, to enter on the next stage of our pilgrimage.

IV.

It had been the intention of Mr. Willett to go with us to visit Mr. Ruskin, with whom he is in the most friendly relations.  But a letter from Mr. Ruskin’s sister spoke of his illness as being too serious for him to see company, and we reluctantly gave up this part of our plan.

My first wish was to revisit Stratford-on-Avon, and as our travelling host was guided in everything by our inclinations, we took the cars for Stratford, where we arrived at five o’clock in the afternoon.  It had been arranged beforehand that we should be the guests of Mr. Charles E. Flower, one of the chief citizens of Stratford, who welcomed us to his beautiful mansion in the most cordial way, and made us once more at home under an English roof.

I well remembered my visit to Stratford in 1834.  The condition of the old house in which Shakespeare was born was very different from that in which we see it to-day.  A series of photographs taken in different years shows its gradual transformation since the time when the old projecting angular sign-board told all who approached “The immortal Shakespeare was born in this House.”  How near the old house came to sharing the fortunes of Jumbo under the management of our enterprising countryman, Mr. Barnum, I am not sure; but that he would have “traded” for it, if the proprietors had been willing, I do not doubt, any more than I doubt that he would make an offer for the Tower of London, if that venerable structure were in the market.  The house in which Shakespeare was born is the Santa Casa of England.  What with my recollections and the photographs with which I was familiarly acquainted, it had nothing very new for me.  Its outside had undergone great changes, but its bare interior was little altered.