ng Falstaff all over
the park after it by the light of Bardolph's nose, upon which they put an
extinguisher if they heard any of the keepers, and so left everybody
groping about and catching the wrong person, was the most wonderful
mixture of fun and tears. Great Will was extremely youthful, but
everybody in the park called him, 'Father William'; and when he wanted to
know which way the deer had gone, King Lear (or else my memory deceives
me) punned, and Lady Macbeth waved a handkerchief for it to be steeped in
the blood of the deer; Shylock ordered one pound of the carcase; Hamlet
(the fact was impressed on me) offered him a three-legged stool; and a
number of kings and knights and ladies lit their torches from Bardolph;
and away they flew, distracting the keepers and leaving Will and his
troop to the deer. That poor thing died from a different weapon at each
recital, though always with a flow of blood and a successful dash of his
antlers into Falstaff; and to hear Falstaff bellow! But it was mournful
to hear how sorry Great Will was over the animal he had slain. He spoke
like music. I found it pathetic in spite of my knowing that the whole
scene was lighted up by Bardolph's nose. When I was just bursting out
crying--for the deer's tongue was lolling out and quick pantings were at
his side; he had little ones at home--Great Will remembered his
engagement to sell Shylock a pound of the carcase; determined that no Jew
should eat of it, he bethought him that Falstaff could well spare a
pound, and he said the Jew would not see the difference: Falstaff only
got off by hard running and roaring out that he knew his unclean life
would make him taste like pork and thus let the Jew into the trick.

My father related all this with such a veritable matter-of-fact air, and
such liveliness--he sounded the chase and its cries, and showed King Lear
tottering, and Hamlet standing dark, and the vast substance of
Falstaff--that I followed the incidents excitedly, and really saw them,
which was better than understanding them. I required some help from him
to see that Hamlet's offer of a three-legged stool at a feverish moment
of the chase, was laughable. He taught me what to think of it by pitching
Great Will's voice high, and Hamlet's very low. By degrees I got some
unconscious knowledge of the characters of Shakespeare.

There never was so fascinating a father as mine for a boy anything under
eight or ten years old. He could guess on Sa