spearian student than Gilray, and Stratford affected
me so much that I passed day after day smoking reverently at the hotel
door; while he, being of the pure tourist type (not that I would say
a word against Gilray), wanted to rush from one place of interest to
another. He did not understand what thoughts came to me as I strolled
down the Stratford streets; and in the hotel, when I lay down on the
sofa, he said I was sleeping, though I was really picturing to myself
Shakespeare's boyhood. Gilray even went the length of arguing that it
would not be a walking tour at all if we never made a start; so, upon
the whole, I was glad when he departed alone. The next day was a
memorable one to me. In the morning I wrote to my London tobacconist for
more Arcadia. I had quarrelled with both of the Stratford tobacconists.
The one of them, as soon as he saw my tobacco-pouch, almost compelled
me to buy a new one. The second was even more annoying. I paid with a
half-sovereign for the tobacco I had got from him; but after gazing at
the pouch he became suspicious of the coin, and asked if I could not pay
him in silver. An insult to my pouch I considered an insult to myself;
so I returned to those shops no more. The evening of the day on which
I wrote to London for tobacco brought me a letter from home saying that
my sister was seriously ill. I had left her in good health, so that the
news was the more distressing. Of course I returned home by the first
train. Sitting alone in a dull railway compartment, my heart was filled
with tenderness, and I recalled the occasions on which I had carelessly
given her pain. Suddenly I remembered that more than once she had
besought me with tears in her eyes to fling away my old tobacco-pouch.
She had always said that it was not respectable. In the bitterness of
self-reproach I pulled the pouch from my pocket, asking myself whether,
after all, the love of a good woman was not a far more precious
possession. Without giving myself time to hesitate, I stood up and
firmly cast my old pouch out at the window. I saw it fall at the foot
of a fence. The train shot on.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

By the time I reached home my sister had been pronounced out of danger.
Of course I was much relieved to hear it, but at the same time this was
a lesson to me not to act rashly. The retention of my tobacco-pouch
would not have retarded her recovery, and I could not help picturing my
pouch, my oldest friend in t