FROM LONDON TO NEW YORK. 209 



limes, foremost of them, a woman, bearing an infant's, 

 coffin under her arm, wrapped in a white sheet. The 

 clerk and sexton, with their robes on, went out to meet 

 them, and conducted them into the church, where the 

 service proper to such occasions was read, after which 

 the coffin was taken out as it was brought in, and low- 

 ered into the grave. It was the smallest funeral I ever 

 saw, and my efforts to play the part of a sympathizing 

 public by hovering in the background, I fear, was only 

 an intrusion after all. 



Having loitered to my heart's content amid the still- 

 ness 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 Ann Hathaway at Shattery,, 

 shunning the highway and following a path that fol- 

 lowed 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 pan- 

 niers 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 Ann'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 eyeing me from the door, evidently hoped I would, 



14 



