AN OCTOBER ABROAD 213 



a poor, crippled,, half-witted fellow came jerking 

 himself across the street after me and offered him- 

 self as a guide. 



"I'm the feller what showed Artemus Ward 

 around when he was here. You 've heerd on me, 

 I expect? Not? Why, he characterized me in 

 * Punch,' he did. He asked me if Shakespeare 

 took all the wit out of Stratford ? And this is 

 what I said to him : * No, he left some for me. ' " 



But not wishing to be guided just then, I bought 

 the poor fellow off with a few pence, and kept on 

 my way. 



Stratford is a quiet old place, and seems mainly 

 the abode of simple common folk. One sees no 

 marked signs of either poverty or riches. It is sit- 

 uated in a beautiful expanse of rich, rolling farming 

 country, but bears little resemblance to a rural town 

 in America: not a tree, not a spear of grass; the 

 houses packed close together and crowded up on the 

 street, the older ones presenting their gables and 

 showing their structure of oak beams. English oak 

 seems incapable of decay even when exposed to the 

 weather, while indoors it takes three or four centu- 

 ries to give it its best polish and hue. 



I took my last view of Stratford quite early of a 

 bright Sunday morning, when the ground was white 

 with a dense hoar-frost. The great church, as I 

 approached it, loomed up under the sun through a 

 bank of blue mist. The Avon was like glass, with 

 little wraiths of vapor clinging here and there to its 

 surface. Two white swans stood on its banks in 



