FullReads

[* Footnote: In England the church always stands in the midst of the graveyard, and hence can be approached only on foot. People it seems, never go to church in carriages or wagons, but on foot, along paths and lanes.]

Having loitered to my heart’s content amid the stillness of the old church, and paced to and fro above the illustrious dead, I set out, with the sun about an hour high, to see the house of Anne Hathaway at Shottery, shunning the highway and following a path that followed hedge-rows, crossed meadows and pastures, skirted turnip-fields and cabbage-patches, to a quaint gathering of low thatched houses,–a little village of farmers and laborers, about a mile from Stratford. At the gate in front of the house a boy was hitching a little gray donkey, almost hidden beneath two immense panniers filled with coarse hay.

“Whose house is this?” inquired I, not being quite able to make out the name.

“Hann’ Ataway’s ‘ouse,” said he.

So I took a good look at Anne’s house,–a homely, human-looking habitation, with its old oak beams and thatched roof,–but did not go in, as Mrs. Baker, who was eying me from the door, evidently hoped I would, but chose rather to walk past it and up the slight rise of ground beyond, where I paused and looked out over the fields, just lit up by the setting sun. Returning, I stepped into the Shakespeare Tavern, a little, homely wayside place on a street, or more like a path, apart from the main road, and the good dame brought me some “home-brewed,” which I drank sitting by a rude table on a rude bench in a small, low room, with a stone floor and an immense chimney. The coals burned cheerily, and the crane and hooks in the fireplace called up visions of my earliest childhood. Apparently the house and the surroundings, and the atmosphere of the place and the ways of the people, were what they were three hundred years ago. It was all sweet and good, and I enjoyed it hugely, and was much refreshed.

Crossing the fields in the gloaming, I came up with some children, each with a tin bucket of milk, threading their way toward Stratford. The little girl, a child ten years old, having a larger bucket than the rest, was obliged to set down her burden every few rods and rest; so I lent her a helping hand. I thought her prattle, in that broad but musical patois, and along these old hedge-rows, the most delicious I ever heard. She said they came to Shottery for milk because it was much better than they got at Stratford. In America they had a cow of their own. Had she lived in America, then? “Oh, yes, four years,” and the stream of her talk was fuller at once. But I hardly recognized even the name of my own country in her innocent prattle; it seemed like a land of fable,–all had a remote mythological air, and I pressed my inquiries as if I was hearing of this strange land for the first time. She had an uncle still living in the “States of Hoio,” but exactly where her father had lived was not so clear. In the States somewhere, and in “Ogden’s Valley.” There was a lake there that had salt in it, and not far off was the sea. “In America,” she said, and she gave such a sweet and novel twang to her words, “we had a cow of our own, and two horses and a wagon and a dog.” “Yes,” joined in her little brother, “and nice chickens and a goose.” “But,” continued the sister, “we owns none o’ them here. In America ‘most everybody owned their houses, and we could ‘a’ owned a house if we had stayid.”

“What made you leave America?” I inquired.

“‘Cause me father wanted to see his friends.”

“Did your mother want to come back?”