Guides were scattered all over the birthplace house in Stratford in the ratio of one or more to each room.  Downstairs a woman guide presided over a battery of glass cases containing personal belongings of Shakspere’s and documents written by him and signed by him.  It is conceded that he could write, but he certainly was a mighty poor speller.  This has been a failing of many well-known writers.  Chaucer was deficient in this regard; and if it were not for a feeling of personal modesty I could apply the illustration nearer home.

Two guides accompanied us as we climbed the stairs to the low-roofed room on the second floor where the creator of Shylock and Juliet was born—­or was not born, if you believe what Ignatius Donnelly had to say on the subject.  But would it not be interesting and valued information if we could only get the evidence on this point of old Mrs. Shakspere, who undoubtedly was present on the occasion?  A member of our party, an American, ventured to remark as much to one of the guides; but the latter did not seem to understand him.  So the American told him just to keep thinking it over at odd moments, and that he would be back again in a couple of years, if nothing happened, and possibly by that time the guide would have caught the drift of his observation.  On second thought, later on, he decided to make it three years—­he did not want to crowd the guide, he said, or put too great a burden on his mentality in a limited space of time.

If England harbors few guides the Continent is fairly glutted with them.  After nightfall the boulevards of Paris are so choked with them that in places there is standing room only.  In Rome the congestion is even greater.  In Rome every other person is a guide —­and sometimes twins.  I do not know why, in thinking of Europe, I invariably associate the subject of guides with the subject of tips.  The guides were no greedier for tips than the cabmen or the hotel helpers, or the railroad hands, or the populace at large.  Nevertheless this is true.  In my mind I am sure guides and tips will always be coupled, as surely as any of those standard team-word combinations of our language that are familiar to all; as firmly paired off as, for example, Castor and Pollux, or Damon and Pythias, or Fair and Warmer, or Hay and Feed.  When I think of one I know I shall think of the other.  Also I shall think of languages; but for that there is a reason.

Tipping—­the giving of tips and the occasional avoidance of giving them—­takes up a good deal of the tourist’s time in Europe.  At first reading the arrangement devised by the guidebooks, of setting aside ten per cent of one’s bill for tipping purposes, seems a better plan and a less costly one than the indiscriminate American system of tipping for each small service at the time of its performance.  The trouble is that this arrangement does not work out so well in actual practice as it sounds in theory.  On the day of your departure