The room more especially assigned to me looked out, at a distance of not more than a stone’s-throw, on the northern aspect of the church where Shakespeare lies buried.  Workmen were busy on the roof of the transept.  I could not conveniently climb up to have a talk with the roofers, but I have my doubts whether they were thinking all the time of the dust over which they were working.  How small a matter literature is to the great seething, toiling, struggling, love-making, bread-winning, child-rearing, death-awaiting men and women who fill this huge, palpitating world of ours!  It would be worth while to pass a week or a month among the plain, average people of Stratford.  What is the relative importance in human well-being of the emendations of the text of Hamlet and the patching of the old trousers and the darning of the old stockings which task the needles of the hard-working households that fight the battle of life in these narrow streets and alleys?  I ask the question; the reader may answer it.

Our host, Mr. Flower, is more deeply interested, perhaps, than any other individual in the “Shakespeare Memorial” buildings which have been erected on the banks of the Avon, a short distance above the Church of the Holy Trinity.  Under Mr. Flower’s guidance we got into one of his boats, and were rowed up the stream to the Memorial edifice.  There is a theatre, in a round tower which has borrowed some traits from the octagon “Globe” theatre of Shakespeare’s day; a Shakespeare library and portrait gallery are forming; and in due time these buildings, of stately dimensions and built solidly of brick, will constitute a Shakespearean centre which will attract to itself many mementoes now scattered about in various parts of the country.

On the 4th of July we remembered our native land with all the affectionate pride of temporary exiles, and did not forget to drink at lunch to the prosperity and continued happiness of the United States of America.  In the afternoon we took to the boat again, and were rowed up the river to the residence of Mr. Edgar Flower, where we found another characteristic English family, with its nine children, one of whom was the typical English boy, most pleasing and attractive in look, voice, and manner.

I attempt no description of the church, the birthplace, or the other constantly visited and often described localities.  The noble bridge, built in the reign of Henry VII. by Sir Hugh Clopton, and afterwards widened, excited my admiration.  It was a much finer piece of work than the one built long afterwards.  I have hardly seen anything which gave me a more striking proof of the thoroughness of the old English workmen.  They built not for an age, but for all time, and the New Zealander will have to wait a long while before he will find in any one of the older bridges that broken arch from which he is to survey the ruins of London.

It is very pleasant to pick up a new epithet to apply to the poet upon whose genius our language has nearly exhausted itself.  It delights me to speak of him in the words which I have just found in a memoir not yet a century old, as “the Warwickshire bard,” “the inestimable Shakespeare.”