My first visit to Stratford-on-Avon was in the regulation fashion. Imprisoned in a dusty and comfortless first-class apartment--first-class is an irony in England when applied to railroad travel, a mere excuse for charging double--we shot around the curves, the glorious Warwickshire landscapes fleeting past in a haze or obscured at times by the drifting smoke. Our reveries were rudely interrupted by the shriek of the English locomotive--like an exaggerated toy whistle--and, with a mere glimpse of town and river, we were brought sharply up to the unattractive station of Stratford-on-Avon. We were hustled by an officious porter into an omnibus, which rattled through the streets until we landed at the Sign of the Red Horse; and the manner of our departure was even the same. Just two years later, after an exhilarating drive of two or three hours over the broad, well-kept highway winding through the parklike fields, fresh from May showers, between Worcester and Stratford, our motor finally climbed a long hill, and there, stretched out before us, lay the valley of the Avon. Far away we caught the gleam of the immortal river, and rising from a group of splendid trees we beheld Trinity Church--almost unique in England for its graceful combination of massive tower and slender spire--the literary shrine of the English-speaking world, the enchanted spot where Shakespeare sleeps. About it were clustered the clean, tiled roofs of the charming town, set like a gem in the Warwickshire landscape, famous as the most beautiful section of Old England. Our car slowed to a stop, and only the subdued hum of the motor broke the stillness as we saw Stratford-on-Avon from afar, conscious of a beauty and sentiment that made our former visit seem commonplace indeed. But I am not going to write of Stratford-on-Avon. Thousands have done this before me--some of them of immortal fame. I shall not attempt to describe or give details concerning a town that is probably visited each year by more people than any other place of the size in the world. I am simply striving in a few words to give the different impressions made upon the same party who visited the town twice in a comparatively short period, the first time by railway train and the last by motor car. If I have anything to say of Stratford, it will come in due sequence in my story.