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O town in the world, not even mighty, metropolitan London itself, has done so much for the Anglo-American ideal, as the little town on the Warwickshire Avon, where William Shakespeare lived and died. And at no time in the year is Stratford-on-Avon so rich in suggestion of mutual regard as in this springtime season, when pilgrims and offerings come from all parts of the world to Shakespeare's tomb.

There are those who believe that the spirit of man chooses the time when it shall enter the world clothed in flesh, and certainly, if the spirit of Shakespeare had such choice, it was wise in deciding that he who was essentially the Englishman, and who was more truly than any other the poet of merry springtime, should be born upon the day of England's patron Saint George, at a time when all nature in his English midland home was full of the joy of youth renewed. On the anniversary days of Shakespeare's birth and death a decorating of his tomb is reverently undertaken, and among the hundreds of floral remembrances, varying from the great wreaths of laurel to the tiny posies picked and

brought by cottagers' children from their little gardens or from the wild hedgerow, we usually find some wreaths from America. And on the Sunday nearest to April 23d, the pulpit of the church in which Shakespeare was baptized and buried is occupied by a special preacher, sometimes an American, as in 1898, when the memorial sermon was preached by Bishop Potter, of New York. The church in which he preached is the only one in England having a stained glass window largely devoted to American saints and worthies. Its designs include portraits of Amerigo Vespucci; Christopher Columbus ; William Penn; Eric, the first Bishop of Greenland; and Samuel Seabury, the first Bishop of Connecticut, as well as panels representing the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers and the consecration of Bishop Seabury.

When American pilgrims enter Stratford from the Great Western Railway station-as most of them do -one of the first objects they see is the memorial fountain, presented in honor of William Shakespeare and of Queen Victoria, in the jubilee year of the late Queen's reign, by George

THE MEMORIAL PICTURE GALLERY, STRATFORD-ON-AVON

Photo by Catharine Weed Ward
MEMORIAL FOUNTAIN PRESENTED BY
GEO. W. CHILDS

W. Childs, of Philadelphia. Such an important gift from an American pilgrim, adorned alternately with British lions and American eagles, is one of the many silent evidences of that unity of spirit which springs from a common heritage in the works of the greatest son of our common race. The opening of this memorial by Henry Irving, England's greatest actor, was worthy of the sentiment inspiring the gift, for, before making his own address on the subject, Mr. (now Sir Henry) Irving read beautiful letters from James Russell Lowell and John. G. Whittier, and a poem from Oliver Wendell Holmes. From the poem I may quote the last verse:

Photo by Catharine Weed Ward

SHAKESPEARE'S TOMB ON SHAKESPEARE'S DAY, APRIL 23

From this point let us cast our thoughts backward to a little incident. in the year 1815,-one which had much to do with influencing and directing the American pilgrimage. On July 25th of that year Washington Irving visited Shakespeare's town and received certain impressions, which were embodied in his "Sketch Book," published five years later. He says: "To a homeless man, who has no spot on this wide world which he can truly call his own, there is a momentary feeling of something like independence and territorial consequence, when, after a weary day's travel, he kicks off his boots, thrusts his feet into slippers, and stretches himself before an

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thickly crowded with portraits and other mementos, given to the landlord of the Red Horse by those who have enjoyed his hospitality since Irving's day. There we may still sit in the same "throne," and wield the same "scepter," and if throne and scepter were endowed with tongues what stories they could tell us of a century's pilgrims to the Shakespeare

shrine.

They have seen Mary Anderson, the American actress, who is still lovingly called "our Mary" by some of those English folk who fell under her spell so many years ago. Before she left the stage, and long before she settled in the lovely Worcestershire vil

lage of Broadway, which is but a few miles from Stratford-on-Avon, she realized one of her ambitions by playing the part of Rosalind in Shakespeare's "As You Like It," on the boards of the Memorial Theater. The deer which was carried by the foresters in the Forest of Arden scene, came from the herd at Charlecote House, where it is said that Shakespeare stole the deer; and keepers who have been descended from those who served Sir Thomas Lucy, led on the hounds of his descendant, who still occupies the grand old manor house.

Celebrities and royalties, literary men and the most illiterate, aristocrats and plutocrats, men, women, and chil