igs from his
mulberry, when it wasn't his mulberry." We were quite ready to allow the
foolishness of the thing, and join the laugh at our own expense.

As to our bed rooms, you must know that all the apartments in this house
are named after different plays of Shakspeare, the name being printed
conspicuously over each door; so that the choosing of our rooms made us
a little sport.

"What rooms will you have, gentlemen?" says the pretty chamber maid.

"Rooms," said Mr. S.; "why, what are there to have?"

"Well, there's Richard III., and there's Hamlet," says the girl.

"O, Hamlet, by all means," said I; "that was always my favorite. Can't
sleep in Richard III., we should have such bad dreams."

"For my part," said C----, "I want All's well that ends well."

"I think," said the chamber maid, hesitating, "the bed in Hamlet isn't
large enough for two. Richard III. is a very nice room, sir."

In fact, it became evident that we were foreordained to Richard; so we
resolved to embrace the modern historical view of this subject, which
will before long turn him out a saint, and not be afraid of the muster
roll of ghosts which Shakspeare represented as infesting his apartment.

Well, for a wonder, the next morning arose a genuine sunny, beautiful
day. Let the fact be recorded that such things do sometimes occur even
in England. C---- was mollified, and began to recant his ill-natured
heresies of the night before, and went so far as to walk, out of his own
proper motion, to Ann Hathaway's Cottage before breakfast--he being one
of the brethren described by Longfellow,

"Who is gifted with most miraculous powers
Of getting up at all sorts of hours;"

and therefore he came in to breakfast table with that serenity of
virtuous composure which generally attends those who have been out
enjoying the beauties of nature while their neighbors have been
ingloriously dozing.

The walk, he said, was beautiful; the cottage damp, musty, and fusty;
and a supposititious old bedstead, of the age of Queen Elizabeth, which
had been obtruded upon his notice because it _might_ have belonged to
Ann Hathaway's mother, received a special malediction. For my part, my
relic-hunting propensities were not in the slightest degree appeased,
but rather stimulated, by the investigations of the day before.

It seemed to me so singular that of such a man there should not remain
one accredited relic! Of Martin Luther, though he lived much earlier,
ho