My previous visit was a hurried one,—­I took but a glimpse, and then went on my way.  Now, for nearly a week I was a resident of Stratford-on-Avon.  How shall I describe the perfectly ideal beauty of the new home in which I found myself!  It is a fine house, surrounded by delightful grounds, which skirt the banks of the Avon for a considerable distance, and come close up to the enclosure of the Church of the Holy Trinity, beneath the floor of which lie the mortal remains of Shakespeare.  The Avon is one of those narrow English rivers in which half a dozen boats might lie side by side, but hardly wide enough for a race between two rowing abreast of each other.  Just here the river is comparatively broad and quiet, there being a dam a little lower down the stream.  The waters were a perfect mirror, as I saw them on one of the still days we had at Stratford.  I do not remember ever before seeing cows walking with their legs in the air, as I saw them reflected in the Avon.  Along the banks the young people were straying.  I wondered if the youthful swains quoted Shakespeare to their ladyloves.  Could they help recalling Romeo and Juliet?  It is quite impossible to think of any human being growing up in this place which claims Shakespeare as its child, about the streets of which he ran as a boy, on the waters of which he must have often floated, without having his image ever present.  Is it so?  There are some boys, from eight to ten or a dozen years old, fishing in the Avon, close by the grounds of “Avonbank,” the place at which we are staying.  I call to the little group.  I say, “Boys, who was this man Shakespeare, people talk so much about?” Boys turn round and look up with a plentiful lack of intelligence in their countenances.  “Don’t you know who he was nor what he was?” Boys look at each other, but confess ignorance.—­Let us try the universal stimulant of human faculties.  “Here are some pennies for the boy that will tell me what that Mr. Shakespeare was.”  The biggest boy finds his tongue at last.  “He was a writer,—­he wrote plays.”  That was as much as I could get out of the youngling.  I remember meeting some boys under the monument upon Bunker Hill, and testing their knowledge as I did that of the Stratford boys.  “What is this great stone pillar here for?” I asked.  “Battle fought here,—­great battle.”  “Who fought?” “Americans and British.” (I never hear the expression Britishers.) “Who was the general on the American side?” “Don’ know,—­General Washington or somebody.”—­What is an old battle, though it may have settled the destinies of a nation, to the game of base-ball between the Boston and Chicago Nines which is to come off to-morrow, or to the game of marbles which Tom and Dick are just going to play together under the shadow of the great obelisk which commemorates the conflict?