"As I went to Shottry, I met with a little incident, which interested me greatly by its unexpectedness. As I was about to pass over a stile, at the end of Stratford, into the fields leading to that village, I saw the master of the national school mustering his scholars to their tasks. I stopped, being pleased with the look of the old man, and said, 'You seem to have a considerable number of lads here; shall you raise another Shakspeare from among them, think you?' 'Why,' replied the master, 'I have a Shakspeare now in the school.' I knew that Shakspeare had no descendants beyond the second generation, and I was not aware that there was any of his family remaining. But it seems that the posterity of his sister, Joan Hart, who is mentioned in his will, yet exist; part under her marriage name of Hart, at Tewkesbury, and a family in Stratford, of the name of Smith. "'I have a Shakspeare here,' said the master, with evident pride and pleasure. 'Here, boys, here!' He quickly mustered his laddish troop in a row, and said to me, 'There now, sir, can you tell which is a Shakspeare?' I glanced my eye along the line, and instantly fixing it on one boy, said, 'That is the Shakspeare.' 'You are right,' said the master, 'that is the Shakspeare; the Shakspeare cast of countenance is there. That is William Shakspeare Smith, a lineal descendant of the poet's sister.' "The lad was a fine lad of, perhaps, ten years of age; and, certainly, the resemblance to the bust of Shakspeare in the church at Stratford is wonderful, considering he is not descended from Shakspeare himself, but from his sister; and that the seventh in descent. What is odd enough is, whether it be mere accident or not, that the color of the lad's eyes, a light hazel, is the very same as that given to those of the Shakspeare bust, which, it is well known, was originally colored, and of which exact copies remain. "I gave the boy sixpence, telling him I hoped he would make as great a man as his ancestor--the best term I could lay hold of for the relationship, though not the true one. The boy's eyes sparkled at the sight of the money, and the healthful, joyous color rushed into his cheeks; his fingers continued making acquaintance with so large a piece of money in his pocket, and the sensation created by so great an event in the school was evident. It sounded oddly enough, as I was passing along the street in the evening, to hear some of the same schoolboys say one to another, 'That is the gentleman who gave Bill Shakspeare sixpence.'