ung across the stage, separated in the center and
shifted backward and forward, as the varying scenes of the family play were
presented for the hisses or cheers of the variegated audience.

The play consisted of three acts, showing the progress of courtship and
marriage at the altar, country and town life with growing children, work,
poverty, and final windup of the husband driven from home by the scolding
wife, bruised in an alehouse, dead and followed to the graveyard by the
Beadle, undertaker and a brindle dog.

The climax scene of the play exhibited the wife with a bundle of rods,
surrounded by ragged children, driving out into a midnight storm the
husband of her bosom, while peals of thunder and flashes of lightning
brought goose pimples and shivers to the frightened audience.

The impression made upon the mind of William and myself did not give us a
very hopeful view of married life, and while the haphazard working,
drinking habits of the husband seemed to deserve all the punishment he
received, the modesty, benevolence and beauty of woman was shattered in our
young souls.

On our way home from the country-tragedy performance we were gladdened by
the thought, that although the rude, vulgar, criminal passions of mankind
were portrayed and enacted day by day all over the globe, we could look up
into the star-lit heavens and see those glittering lamps of night shining
with reflected light on the murmuring bosom of the Avon, as it flowed in
peaceful ripples to the Severn and from the Severn to the sea. Nature
soothed our young hearts, and soon, in the mysterious realms of sleep, we
forgot the sorrows and poverty of earth, tripping away with angelic
companions through the golden fields of celestial dreams.

_"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy."_

I shall never forget the great shows and pageants that took place in
Warwickshire County, in July, 1575. All England was alive to the grand
entrance of Queen Elizabeth to Kenilworth Castle, as the royal guest of her
favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Proclamation had gone forth
that all work be suspended, while yeoman, trader, merchant, doctor, lawyer,
minister, lords and earls should pay a pilgrimage to Kenilworth and pay
tribute to the Virgin Queen.

Stratford and the surrounding villages were aflame with enthusiasm, and as
John Shakspere, the alderman and mayor, took great interest in theatricals