LXIV.

AMERICAN AUTHORS.

Dear sisters:--You have heard of Mr. Shakespeare, a writer of old
England, who died, years and years ago, in a little country place in
England. He was celebrated for several things besides writing. Going to
sleep under trees is one of them; shooting deer that belonged to
somebody else--who took him up and made an awful time about it before a
justice of the peace, who fined him, or something--is another. Then,
again, he married an elderly girl, and forgot to live with her ever so
long. While she stayed at home, he went up to London, and wrote plays
and played them before her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, who ought to have
reminded him of his married elderly girl, being her own royal self of
that class, only not married. There is no reason to think she did have
much influence in that direction though, for that particular queen was
more celebrated for keeping husbands away from their wives than bringing
them cosily together.

The truth is, from the very first--when she got up a series of romping
platonics with Lord Seymour, her step-mother's husband, to her last,
gray-headed old flirtation with the young Essex--her taste ran against
the practical idea of husbands living with their own wives. That
non-matrimonial creature may have tried her power on Shakespeare--who
knows?

Sisters, there is one part of this man's life and character that may
shock your religious feelings. _He wrote plays_; _he acted plays too_;
and that female queen encouraged him in it. Now, ever since I went to
see the "Black Crook," I scorn myself for ever having one mite of
charity for such things, and I haven't the conscience to say one word in
their favor to you, as a Society. Still, this Mr. Shakespeare did write
some things that might have sounded tolerably well in a lecture or a
sermon that wasn't too strictly doctrinal.

Last night I was talking with a lawyer from away "Out West," who spoke
real kindly about Mr. Shakespeare's writings, and seemed to think if he
had put off being born until now, and settled "Out West," where he could
have given him a hint now and then, he might have made a first-rate
literary man. "Even as it is," says he, "I do my best to make him
popular, for he wrote some very readable things--very readable, indeed.
For instance, not long since, in an exciting slander case, I quoted
these lines, with a burning eloquence that lifted the judge right off
from his bench:

"'He,' says I, 'tha