CHAPTER II.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in our philosophy."

I shall never forget the great shows and pageants that took place in Warwickshire County, in July, 1575. All England was alive to the grand entrance of Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle, as the royal guest of her favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Proclamation had gone forth that all work be suspended, while yeoman, trader, merchant, doctor, lawyer, minister, lords and earls should pay a pilgrimage to Kenilworth and pay tribute to the Virgin Queen.

Stratford and the surrounding villages were aflame with enthusiasm, and as John Shakspere, the alderman and mayor, took great interest in theatricals and particularly those festivities inaugurated for the entertainment of royalty, he led a great concourse of devoted patriots through the forests of Arden, blooming parks of Warwick Castle on to the grand surroundings of Kenilworth, where the peopleen massecamped, sang, danced, took part in country plays, feasted and went wild for eighteen days, over the illustrious daughter of Henry the Eighth.

William and myself were among the enthusiastic revelers, and for boys of twelve years of age, we felt more cheer than any of the lads and lasses from Stratford, because our parents furnished us with milk white ponies, to pay tribute, and typify the virtue and chastity of the "Virgin Queen!" We did not particularly care about virtue or virginity, so we shared in the cakes and ale that were lavished in profusion to the rural multitude.

A high grand throne made out of evergreens and wild flowers was erected in the central park ofKenilworth, rimmed in by lofty elms, oaks and sycamores.

There, through the fleeting days and nights, the Queen and her royal suite of a thousand purpled cavaliers and bejeweled maids of honor, held court and viewed the ever-changing, living panorama evolved for their entertainment. The Queen looked like a wilderness of lace and variegated velvet, irrigated with a shower of diamonds.

On the 9th of July Queen "Bess" and her illuminated suite entered the Castle of Kenilworth, and the hands of the clock in the great tower pointed to the hour of two, where they remained until her departure, as invitation to a continual banquet.

The Earl expended a thousand pounds a day for the fluid and food entertainment of his guests, while woodland bowers and innumerable tents were scattered through the royal domain generously donated to man and maid by night and day. We boys and girls seldom went to bed.

Companies of circus performers, and theatrical artists, from London and other towns were brought down to the heart of Old Albion to swell the pleasure of the reigning Queen. Continual plays were going on, while horn, fife, bugle and drum lent music to the kaleidoscopic revel.

Dancing, hunting, hawking and archery parties, through the day, lent their antics to the scene, and when night came with bright Luna showing her mystic face, forest fires, rockets and illuminated balloons filled the air with celestial wonder, vieing with the stars in an effort to do universal honorto the "Virgin Queen!" That's what they called "Bess."

William and myself took part in several of the joint circus and theatrical performances, and at the conclusion of one of the plays—"Virtue Victorious," Queen Elizabeth called up William and a purple page named Francis Bacon, patted them on the head with her royal digits, and said they would soon be great men!

I must acknowledge that I felt a little envious at the encomium, not so much to William, as to the proud peacock, Bacon, who came in the train of the Queen.

At sunrise of the 27th of July, 1575, the festivities closed, and the royal cavalcade with a following of ten thousand loyal subjects, accompanied the ruling monarch to the borders of Warwickshire, with universal shouts and ovations on her triumphal march to London.

"I would applaud thee to the very echo,That should applaud again.""All that glitters is not gold,Often you have heard that told;Many a man his life hath soldBut my outside to behold!"

"I would applaud thee to the very echo,That should applaud again."

"All that glitters is not gold,Often you have heard that told;Many a man his life hath soldBut my outside to behold!"

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our Stars,But in ourselves that we are underlings."

Will Shakspere and myself left school when we were fourteen years of age. Our parents being reduced in worldly circumstances, needed the financial fruits of our labor.

Shakspere was bound to a butcher named John Bull, for a term of three years, while I was put at the trade of stone-cutting with Sam Granite for the same period.

Will was one of the finest looking boys in the town of Stratford, aristocratic by nature, large and noble in appearance, and the pride of all the girls in the county of Warwick; for his fame as a runner, boxer, drinker, dancer, reciter, speaker, hunter, swimmer and singer was well known in the surrounding farms and villages, where he had occasion to drive, purchase and sell meat animals for his butcher boss, John Bull. Shakspere's father assisted Bull in selling hides and buying wool.

In the winter of 1580, Will and myself joined a new thespian society, organized by the boys andgirls of Stratford, with a contingent of theatrical talent from Shottery, Snitterfield, Leicester, Kenilworth and Coventry.

Strolling players, chartered by Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester, often visited Stratford and the surrounding towns, infusing into the young, and even the old, a desire for that innocent fun of tragic or comic philosophy that wandering minstrels and circus exhibitions generate in the human heart.

Plays of Roman, Spanish and German origin, as well as those of Old Albion, were enacted on our rural stage, and although we had not the paraphernalia and scenery of the London actors, we made up in frantic enthusiasm what we lacked in artistic finish, and often in our amateur exhibitions at balls, fairs, races and May Day Morris dances, we "astonished the natives," who paid from a penny to sixpence to see and hear the "Stratford Oriental Theatrical Company."

Shakspere always took a leading part in every play, poem and declamation, but when an encore was given and a demand for a recitation on love, Will was in his natural element and gave the eager audience dashes from Ovid's Metamorphoses or Petrarch's Sonnets.

The local company had a large assortment of poetic and theatrical translations, and many of the boys and girls who had passed through the Latin school, could "spout" the rhythmic lines of Ovid, Virgil, Horace or Petrarch in the original language. And strange to say, the Warwickshire audience would cheer the Latin more than the English rendition, on the principle that the least you knowabout a thing the more you enjoy it! Thus pretense and ignorance make a stagger at information, and while fooling themselves, imagine that they fool their elbow neighbor!

Shakspere had a most marvelous memory, and his sense of taste, smell, feeling, hearing and particularly seeing was abnormally developed, and constant practice in talking and copying verses and philosophic sentences made him almost perfect in his deductions and conclusions. He was a natural orator, and impressed the beholder with his superiority.

He had a habit of copying the best verses, dramatic phrases and orations of ancient authors, and then to show his superiority of epigrammatic, incisive style, he could paraphrase the poems of other writers into his own divine sentences, using the crude ore of Homeric and Platonic philosophy, resolving their thoughts into the best form of classic English, lucid, brave and blunt!

I have often tested his powers of lightning observation with each of us running by shop windows in Stratford, Oxford or London, and betting a dinner as to who could name the greatest number of objects, and he invariably could name correctly three to my one. In visiting country farmers in search of cattle, sheep or pigs he could mount a stone fence or climb a hedge row gate, and by a glance over the field or meadow, give the correct number of animals in sight.

He was a wonder to the yeomanry of Warwickshire and the surrounding counties, and when he had occasion to rest for the night at farm houses or taverns, he was the prime favorite of the ruralflames or bouncing, beaming barmaid. The girls went wild about him. The physical development of Shakspere was as noticeable as his mental superiority. Often when he ploughed the placid waters of the Avon, or buffeted the breakers of the moaning sea, have I gazed in rapture at his manly, Adonis form, standing on the sands, like a Grecian wrestler, waiting for the laurel crown of the Olympic games.

Great Shakspere was endowed with heavenly light;He read the book of Nature day and night,And delving through the strata of mankindDivined the thoughts that thrilled the mystic mind,And felt the pulse of all the human race,While from their beating heart could surely traceThe various passions that inspire the soulAround this breathing world from pole to pole!

My family and the Hathaway household were on familiar terms, for my father at times worked an adjoining estate at the edge of the village of Shottery, a straggling community of farmers and tradesmen, with the usual wheelwright, blacksmith shop, corn and meat store and alehouse attachments.

William, in his rural perambulations, often put up for the night at our cottage, and as there was generally some fun going on in the neighborhood after dark, I led him into many frolics with the boys and girls; and I can assure you he was a rusher with the fair sex, capturing the plums that fell from the tree of beauty and passion.

On a certain moonlight night, in the month of May, 1581, a large concourse of rural belles andbeaux assembled at the home of John Dryden, washed by the waters of the Avon, and thrilled by the songs of the nightingales, thrushes and larks lending enchantment to the flitting hours.

Stratford, Snitterfield, Wilmcote and Shottery sent their contingent of roistering boys and girls to enjoy the moonlight lawn dance and rural feast set out under flowery bowers by the generous Dryden.

It would have done your heart good to see the variegated dresses, antics and faces of the happy rural belles. I see them as plain as ever in the looking-glass of memory. There is Laura Combs, plump and intelligent, Mary Scott, willowy and keen, Jennie Field, sedate and sterling, Mary Hall, musical and handsome, Annie Condell, modest and benevolent, Joyce Acton, witty and aristocratic, Lizzie Heminge, bouncing and beaming, Fannie Hunt, stately and kind, while Anne Hathaway, the big girl of the party, seemed to be the leader in all the innocent mischief of the evening.

William took a particular liking to the push and go of Anne, and she seemed to concentrate her gaze on his robust form at first sight. William asked me, as the friend of the family, to introduce him to Miss Hathaway, which I did in my best words, and away they went, on a hop, step and a jump through the Morris dance that was just then being enacted on the lawn.

The clarion notes of the farm cocks were saluting the rosy footsteps of the dawn when the various parties dispersed for home.

The last I saw of William he was helping Miss Hathaway over the rustic stile and hedge row thatrimmed the old thatched cottage home of his new found flame.

It was a frigid day or night when William could not find something fresh and new among the fair sex, and like a king bee in a field of wild flowers, he sipped the nectar of love and beauty, and tossed carking care to the vagrant winds.

It was soon after this moonlight party that a picnic revel was given in the domain of Sir Hugh Clopton, near the old mill and stone bridge erected by that generous public benefactor.

The boys and girls of the town turned outen masse, and enjoyed the hawking, hunting, swimming, dancing, archery and boating that prevailed that day.

In the midst of the festivities, while a long line of rural beauties and beaux were prancing and rollicking on the bridge, a scream, and a flash of Dolly Varden dress in the river showed the struggling efforts of Anne Hathaway to keep her head above water.

One glance at the pride of his heart struggling for her life determined the soul of the athlete, when he plunged into the running stream, caught the arm of his adored as she was going down for the third time, and then with a few mighty sweeps of his brawny arm, he reached the shore and heaved her on the sands in an almost lifeless condition. She was soon restored, however, by her numerous companions, with only the loss of a few ribbons and bunches of hawthorn blossoms that William had tied in her golden hair that morning.

William was the hero of the day, and his fame for bravery rung on the lips of the Warwickshire yeomanry, while in the heart of Anne Hathaway devotion reigned supreme.

"There is no love broker in the world can more prevail in man's commendation with woman than report of valor."

The courtship of William and Anne was rapid, and although her father died only a few months before the 27th of November, 1582, license to marry was suddenly obtained through the insistence of the yeoman friends of the Hathaway family, Fulke-Sandells and John Richardson, who convinced the Lord Bishop of Worcester that one calling of the banns of matrimony was only necessary.

William left his home in Stratford immediately and took charge of Anne's cottage and farm, settling down as soon as one of his rollicking nature could realize that he had been virtually forced into marrying a buxom girl, eight years older than himself, and a woman of hot temper.Sixmonths after marriage Susanna, his daughter was born, and about two years after, February 2d, 1585, his twin children Hammet and Judith were ushered into his cottage home, as new pledges of matrimonial felicity.

Things did not move on with William as happily after marriage as before, and while his wife did most of the work, the Bard of Nature preferred to shirk hard labor in field and wood, longing constantly to meet the "boys" at the tavern, or fish, sing, hunt and poach along the Avon.

Yoking Pegasus to a Flanders mare would be about as reasonable as joining a practical, honest woman with a poet!

Water and hot oil will not mix, and the fires of genius cannot be curbed or subdued by material surroundings. Beef cannot appreciate brains!

Anne was constantly sand papering William about his vagabond life, and holding up the picture of ruin for her ancestral estate, by his thoughtless extravagance and determination to attend to other people's business instead of his own. As the wife was senior and business boss, the Bard endured these curtain lectures with meekness and surface sorrow and promises of reformation, but, when out of her sight continued in the same old rut of playing the clown and philosopher for the public amusement.

"How hard it is to hide the spark of Nature!"

"Hanging and wiving go by destiny!"

The drudgery of farm work was not relished by Shakspere, and the spring of 1586 found the man of destiny more engaged in the sports of Stratford and surrounding villages than in the production of corn, cabbage, turnips and potatoes. Where fun was to be found William raised the auction and the highest bidder at the booths of vanity fair. He was athletic in mind and body, and forever like a cribbed lion or caged eagle, struggled to shake off his rural environments and dash away into the world of thought and action.

Home, with its practical, daily gad grind morality and responsibility, had no charm for William, and his stalwart wife made matters worse by her continual importunities to her vagabond husband to settle down with the muttonhead clodhoppers and tradesmen of Warwickshire. He was not built that way!

Her farm logic fell upon deaf ears, for while she was preaching hard work he was reading the love-lit flights of Ovid and pondering over the sugared sonnets of Petrarch and Sir Philip Sidney, living in the realms of Clio, Euterpe and Terpsichore,preparing even then his pathway to the great poems of Venus and Adonis, Lucrece, the sonnets and the immortal plays that were incubating in the procreant soul of the Divine Bard. He was his own schoolmaster, drawing daily draughts from the universal fountains of Nature.

And what a blessing it is to the public to have even a social scapegrace hatch out golden ideas for their education and amusement, notwithstanding the neglect of farm and family!

The greatest good to the greatest number is best for all time.

"God moves in a mysterious way,His wonders to perform,He plants His footsteps in the seaAnd rides upon the storm."

On the first of September, 1586, the lord high sheriff of Coventry invited the people to an archery and drinking contest.

Representatives from twenty-five villages and towns were selected, from the various working guilds and professions, to conquer or die (drunk) in the Queen's name for the honor of Old Albion.

Ceres, the Goddess of Harvest, had showered her riches on the fields and forests of Warwickshire, and to glorify her abundance, a great athletic and semimilitary carnival was thus given by the authorities to test the bravery, endurance and greatness of the sons of Saint George and the Dragon.

The beautiful, broad, undulating, winding highways, leading from Stratford, Warwick, Kenilworth and Birmingham to the ancient town of Coventrywere filled with jolly pilgrims to pay devotion at the shrine of Hercules and Bacchus, with the influence of Venus as an ever-present incentive to passionate pleasure.

That bright September morning I well remember! Dame Nature was just donning her variegated gown of rustic-brown, while fitful airs from the realms of Jack Frost were painting the wild roses and forest leaves in cardinal hue, and the blackbird, thrush and musical nightingale flew low and sang hoarse, but continually, in their assemblages for migration to lands of sun and flowers.

From Kenilworth to Coventry the rural scenery is as various and beautiful as visions of a dream, and the undulating landscape by hill and dale, field and forest, river, marge, cottage, hall, church and castle, grouping themselves in shifting pictures of beauty and grandeur, where lofty elms and sycamores rise and bend their willowy arms to the passing breeze, indelibly impresses the beholder with a splendid kaleidoscopic view of English hospitality and agricultural cultivation.

The tall turrets of monasteries, castles and soaring church spires of Coventry looked luminous in the morning sunshine, while the brazen tongues of century bells rolled their mellifluous matin tones in voluminous welcome to the great multitude of revelers within her embattled walls and hospitable homes.

Promptly at nine o'clock in the morning, in the Leicester Park, twenty-five accoutered long bow men, in archery uniform, took their stand before the bull's eye targets two hundred yards away.

At the words "draw," "aim" and "fly" the whizzing arrows centered and shivered in the oak targets, and none hit the bull's but Will Shakspere of Stratford, who was proclaimed winner of the first prize, an ox, a barrel of sack and butt of wine, with the privilege of kissing every girl in the county.

The entire day was spent in all kinds of sports, and with roasts, joints, bread, pudding, sack, ale, gin, brandy and whiskey, the revelers did not break up until daylight, when all were laid under the table but William and his friends Burbage, Condell and Dick Field, who had come away from his printing house in London to witness one of the greatest rural sports of England.

Although Stratford was not a day's walk from Coventry, William and his friends did not succeed in getting back for three days, and often they traveled by the light of the moon believing it was the sun in midday splendor.

Anne Hathaway heard of William's official and social victory, not in the proud light of his Stratford and Shottery alehouse companions, but with a tongue like a gad, she proposed to lash him into shame as a husband or drive him from his cottage home to earn a living for his infant children.

William was a little dubious as to his reception, and in order to temper the storm to the "ambling lamb," he earnestly requested me to accompany him home, as a buffer to his contemplated reception, believing that Anne would mellow her words and actions in the presence of an old friend.

I respectfully declined his pressing invitation and twitted him on being afraid of a woman, when he plaintively exclaimed:

Anne Hath-a-way that gives me pain,She scolds both day and night;Her tongue goes pattering like the rainAnd speeds my outward flight;I'll soon be gone to London townAnd leave her house and landWhere I will gain some great renownThat she may understand.

I met William the next morning on his way to the Crown Tavern in search of a "Martini Cocktail," a new drink that an Indian from America had invented for Admiral Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh.

William bore the appearance of a man who had slept by a smoky chimney, or encountered the butt end of a threshing flail. He seemed sombre and muttered to himself:

"When sorrows come they come not singleBut in battalions!"

I joined him in liquidation at the tavern, for, to tell the truth, my throat felt like the rough edge of a buffalo robe, and my nerves trembled like aspen leaves in July.

When our usual village sports filed around the table, and glee and song once more prevailed, William began to soften in his statuesque attitude, and laughingly proposed that we "go a poaching" on the imprisoned animals and birds that Squire Lucy corraled for his special delectation, to the detriment of honest apprentices and pure-minded yeomanry.

His proposition was agreed to unanimously,and just as the sun tipped the treetops of the Charlecote domain, we had scared up a couple of fat deer, and sent our arrows through their trembling anatomy, and the number of hares, grouse and pigeons we slaughtered that evening kept the landlord of the Crown Tavern busy for two days to dish up to his jolly revelers.

In this escapade we only imitated the aristocratic students of Oxford College, who frequently made inroads into lordly domains and took some of the treasures that God and Nature intended for all men, instead of being hatched, bred and watched by impudent and cruel gamekeepers, employed by tyrannical landlords, in defiance of the natural rights of the people.

Even the fish in the Avon, Severn and Bay were registered and claimed by scrubs of royalty for their exclusive use, fine and imprisonment being imposed for hunting on the land and fishing in the streams that God made for all men.

These parliamentary laws should be voted or bulleted out of the statute books, and the people again inherit their inalienable rights.

My friend William was arrested by the malicious Lucy, and the gamekeeper, Tom Snap, swore to enough facts to exile, hang and quarter the Bard.

Through the influence of his father and John A. Combe, William, the chief culprit, was not imprisoned, but compelled to pay a fine of one pound ten.

He did not have but three shillings, yet the boys secretly passed the hat around in the court yard and tavern, and soon extricated our chum from the toils of Sir Thomas Lucy.

William did not have the courage to face his wife after a week's absence, and told me privately that he was going off instanter by the way of Oxford to London and seek his fortune.

I applauded his spunk and determination, and, at his solicitation willingly joined him in his eloquent rambles. My parents were both dead, and being of a bohemian tendency, my home has ever been on any spot of the earth where the sun rose or set. Pot luck suits me.

Natural freedom of body and mind has ever been my greatest delight and the artificial fashions and tyrannical laws of society I despise and defy, and shall to my dying day. My mind is my master.

Right is my religion and God is my instructor!

"I must have libertyWithal, as large a charter as the windTo blow on whom I please."

The evening before we left Stratford William wrote a short note to his wife and said that he would take her advice, leave the town, and seek his fortune in the whirlpool of grand old London.

I imagine that Anne was delighted to receive his impromptu note, for it left her one less mouth to feed; and William was equally satisfied to be relieved of the rôle of playing husband without any of the practical moral adjuncts.

In passing by the entrance gate to the lordly estate of Sir Thomas Lucy, or Justice Shallow, William nailed up the following poetic shot to the hot-headed old squire, which was read and copied the next morning, by all the market mengoing to town, and the tavern lads going to their country ploughs:

"The tyrant Thomas LucyLets no one go to mass,He's a squire for Queen Bess,And in Parliament an ass;Fair Charlecote is ruinedBy this bluffer of the state,And only his dependentsWill dare to call him great.The deer and hares and pidgeonsAre imprisoned for his use,Yet, poaching lads from StratfordPluck this strutting, feathered goose."

"Blessed are those whose bloodAnd judgment are so commingled,That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger'To sound what stop she pleases.''Give me that man that is not passion's slave,'And I will wear him in my heart's core,Ay, in my heart of heart as I do thee."

Early on the morning of the 9th of September, 1586, William and myself took our departure from the Crown Tavern. The landlord, Tom Gill, gave us a bottle of his best gin and brandy to cheer us on our way to fame and fortune. Fannie Hill, the barmaid, threw kisses at us until we rounded the corner of the street leading to the old Grammar School. We carried blackthorn cudgels to protect us from gamekeepers, lords and dogs.

As we passed the modest cottage where William's parents resided, he impulsively broke away from my presence to bid a long farewell to his angelic mother, and soon again he was at my side, flushed with pride and tears, exclaiming in undertone:

A mother's love and fervent hopeAre coined into our horoscope,And to our latest dying breathHer heart and soul are ours to death!

In his clutched hand he held four gold "sovereigns" that his fond mother had given him at parting to help him in the daily trials of life, when no other friend could be so true and powerful. Gold gilds success.

"Here, Jack, keep two of these for yourself, and if I should ever be penniless, and you have gold, I know you will aid me in a pinch. The wine nature of your soul needs no bush."

"We still have slept together,Rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together,And wherever we went like Juno's swans,Still we went coupled, and inseparable."

"William," said I, "memory with her indelible signet shall long imprint this generous act of yours upon my soul, and when hundreds of years have passed, I shall tell of the undying friendship of two bohemians, who, day and night, set their own fashion, created a world of their own, and lived ecstatically, oscillating between the blunders of Bacchus and the vanity of Venus!"

William's heart was heavy when turning his back on father, mother, brother, sister, wife and children, at the age of twenty-two.

We passed along the Clopton stone bridge, and as we tramped over Primrose Hill looking back at the roofs and spires of Stratford, glinting in the morning light, the Bard uttered this impulsive dash of eloquence:

Farewell, farewell! a sad farewellTo glowing scenes of boyhood.Ye rocks, and rills and forests primevalList to my sighing soul, trembling on the tongueTo vent its echoes in ambient air.No more shall wild eyed deer,Fretful hares, hawks and houndsEntrance mine ear and vision,Or frantically depart whenStealthy footsteps disturb the lark,Ere Phœbus' golden lightIlluminates the dawn.Memory, many hued maiden,Oft in midnight hoursShall picture these eternal hills,And purling streams, rimmed byVernal meadows;And pillowed even in the lap of miseryFantastic visions of theeShall lull deepest woe to repose.And banqueting at yon alehouse,Nestling near blooming hedge and snowyHawthorn, I shall live againIn blissful dreams among the enchantingPrecincts of the silver, serpentine Avon.To thee I lift my hands in prayerDisappearing, and pinioned with Hope;Daughter of Love and sunrise—Go forth to multitudinous London,And, "buckle fortune on my back""To bear her burden," to successful,Lofty heights of mind illimitable.

With this apostrophe, we took a last look at the glinting gables and sparkling spires of Stratford, disappearing over the hill, our steps and faces turned to London town, that seething whirlpool of human woe and pleasure.

The air was cold and the country roads were rutty and muddy, but the autumn landscape was beautiful, in its gray and purple garb, while the notes of flitting wild birds chirped and sang from bush, hedge, field and forest, in a mournful monotone to the fading glory of the year.

The various birds chattered in clumps along the highway, and then would rise over our heads in flitting flocks, steering their course to the south and seemingly accompanying us on our wandering way to the great metropolis.

In our zigzag course we passed through the towns of Ettington, Oxhill, Wroxton, Woodstock, Eversham and Oxford.

It was near sunset when the lofty towers and steeples of ancient Oxford, the great site of classic lore, met our view. In our haste to enter the city before dark, we jumped a hedge fence, and stone wall, making a short cross-cut over the lordly domain of the Earl of Norfolk, and just as we were again emerging into the great road, a gamekeeper was seen approaching with a huge mastiff, who rushed upon us like a lion.

We were near a rough wall, and it appeared to both of us that unless we stood for immediate fight the dog would tear us to pieces.

The gamekeeper urged the dog in his barking, mad career, but just as he made a grand leap at William's throat, his blackthorn cudgel came down with a whirl and broke the forelegs of the mastiff, sending him to earth with a growl androar that could be heard over the castle walls that loomed up in the evening gray. The gamekeeper aimed a blunderbuss at the Bard, but ere he could fire the deadly weapon, I jumped on the petty tyrant whelp, and cudgeled his face into a macerated beefsteak.

We then leaped the garden wall and rushed into the city crowd where the curtains of night screened us from dogs and licentious lords.

We found our way to the Crown Tavern, kept by Richard Devanant and his buxom black-eyed wife.

The old Boniface was jolly, but was in his physical and spiritual dotage, yet "Nell," his second wife, was the life of the place, being immensely popular with the Oxford students, who circled about the "Crown" in midnight hours, with hilarious independence, that defied the raids of beadles, watchmen and armed constabulary.

Those were gay and roystering days and nights when the greatest yeoman, tradesman, student, or lord, was the one who "drank his comrade under the table" and went away at sunrise like a lark, fluttering with dew from his downy wing, and soaring into the sky of beauty and action.

It was Saturday night when we pulled up at the old tavern, and there seemed to be a great crowd of town people celebrating some local event.

We soon found that the senior class of Oxonian students had conquered the senior class of Cambridge at a great game of inter-college football and the cheers and yells of Oxford bloods permeated the atmosphere until midnight.

A round table spread in the tavern hall wasloaded with food and liquors, while songs and speeches were given with a vim, all boasting of the prowess and patriotism of Oxford.

A number of strolling players and boxers were introduced during the evening.

A young lord named Bob Burleigh, was president of the club, while Mat Monmouth was the spokesman, who called on the various students and actors to entertain the town roysters who dropped in to see the free and easy celebration of the football victory.

While drowning our grief and loneliness in pewter pots of ale at a side table, in a snug corner, who should slap William on the shoulder but Ned Sadler, our old schoolmate from Stratford. Ned was a jolly rake, and had been in London sporting with theatrical companies, and, as a citizen of the world, was perfectly at home wherever night overtook him.

At the height of the college banquet Mat Monmouth announced that the president of the Cambridge Boxing Club had just challenged the president of the Oxford Club to fight, under the King's rule, for a purse of twenty guineas.

A wild cheer rent the room, and instanter the chairs and tables were pushed aside, when Dick Milton and Jack Norfolk stepped into the improvised prize ring, made by the circling arms of the students.

Five rounds with gloves were to be fought, and the champion who knocked out his opponent three times, should be the victor.

Dick Milton, the Cambridge athlete, when "time" was called, rushed on Jack Norfolk, theOxford man, with a blow that sent him over the circling arms and into the chairs.

Score one for Dick.

Time was called, and Jack, although a little dazed, leaped at his opponent, who dodged the rush, and with a quick turn got in a left-hander on Jack's neck, and pastured him again among the yelling bloods.

Score two for Dick.

When time was called for the third round, the Oxford man looked bleary and tremulous, but with that bull-dog courage that never deserts an Englishman, he threw himself on the Cambridge man with great force and both went down with a crash.

Dick shook his opponent off like a terrier would a rat, and standing erect at the end of the room, waited for the call of time.

Jack Norfolk did not respond to the call.

Score three for Dick. Victory!

Then the yell of the Cambridge students could be heard among the turrets and gables of classic Oxford, a recompense for their defeat at the afternoon football game.

Dick Milton, flushed with wine and victory, held aloft the purse of guineas, and challenged any man in the room to fight him three rounds.

There seemed to be no immediate response, but I noticed a flush in the face of William, who modestly rose in his six-foot form and asked if the challenge included outside citizens?

Dick immediately replied, "You, or anybody in England." William said he did not know much about fighting with gloves, but if the gentlemanwould consent to three rounds with bare knuckles he would be pleased to accommodate him at once.

"All right, toe the mark!"

Mat Monmouth called time.

Dick Milton made a tiger leap at William, and landed with his right eye on the right knuckles of the Stratford citizen. The quickness and science of the Bard was a great surprise to the Cambridge athlete, and when time was called he came up groggy with a funeral eye, on the defense, and not on the tiger attack.

Considerable sparring for place, and dodging about the human ring, was indulged in by Dick, but William foiled each blow, and as the Cambridge man inadvertently rubbed his swollen eye, the Bard landed a stinging blow on the left optic of Milton and sent him into the arms of the landlord.

When time was called, no response from the Cambridge champion was heard, and Mat Monmouth handed over the prize purse to William, when the Oxford lads cheered the Stratford stranger to the echo, and made him an honorary member of their athletic club.

"Screw your courage to the sticking place,And we will not fail."

At the second crow of the cock William and myself bid good-bye to the jolly Boniface and his fantastic spouse, who made a deep impression on the Bard. In fact, he was easily impressed when youth, beauty and pleasure reigned around, and had he been born in Kentucky, no blue ribbonstallion in the commonwealth could match his form, spirit or gait.

Apollo with his rosy footsteps lit up hill, meadow and lawn, and kissed away the sparkling dewdrops of bush and hedge, cheering us on our way through the towns of Thane, over the Chilton Hills, on to Great Marlow, Maidenhead and renowned Windsor, where forest and castle thrilled the beholder with admiration for the works of Nature and Art.

It was late in the afternoon when we entered the broad highway to Windsor, passing numerous yeomen and tradespeople on their way to and from the royal domain of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.

In striding along, with hearts light and airy, we were suddenly startled by cries of frantic yells coming from the rear, and looking around beheld a wild, runaway horse, and an open wagon with two young girls screaming for help.

To see, think and act was always the way of William, and as the horse rushed by with wagon and girls, nearly clipping our legs off, the Bard made a leap for the tail board of the vehicle and landed in the midst of the frightened girls. He then, as if inspired with the impulse of a tiger, jumped on the back of the rushing animal, grabbed the trailing lines, and neck of the horse, and steered him into a huge box hedge row that skirted the castle walls of Windsor.

Every one went after the runaway to see the fate of the party; but strange to say, the horse was lodged high and dry in the hedge row, while William and the girls crawled out of the wreck without a scratch, soon recovering from the fear, trepidation and danger that but a moment before reigned supreme.

We put up for the night at the Red Lion Tavern, and you may be sure that William was the hero of the town.

Rose and Bess Montagle were the young ladies whose lives had been providentially saved, and their father was the head gamekeeper of Windsor.

William was invited for breakfast the next morning at the stone lodge to receive hearty thanks and reward for his heroic action in risking his life for the salvation of others; but the Bard excused himself, saying that he must start by daylight for his last stretch to London, and only asked from the young ladies a sprig of boxwood and lock of their golden hair.

At parting the father threw William a bag of gold, and the girls presented him with the tokens desired, in addition to impulsive bashful kisses.

We were off promptly by sunrise, and steering our course to Houndslow, Brentford, Kensington, and to the top of Primrose Hill, we first caught sight of the spires, domes, turrets, temples and palaces of multitudinous, universal London.

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