While in London, my friend Albert Smith, a jolly companion, as well as a witty and sensible author, promised that when I reached Birmingham he would come and spend a day with me in “sight-seeing,” including a visit to the house in which Shakespeare was born. Early one morning in the autumn of 1844, my friend Smith and myself took the box-seat of an English mail-coach, and were soon whirling at the rate of twelve miles an hour over the magnificent road leading from Birmingham to Stratford. The distance is thirty miles. At a little village four miles from Stratford, we found that the fame of the bard of Avon had travelled thus far, for we noticed a sign over a miserable barber’s shop, “Shakespeare hair-dressing--a good shave for a penny.” In twenty minutes more we were set down at the door of the Red Horse Hotel, in Stratford. The coachman and guard were each paid half a crown as their perquisites. While breakfast was preparing, we called for a guide-book to the town, and the waiter brought in a book, saying that we should find in it the best description extant of the birth and burial place of Shakespeare. I was not a little proud to find this volume to be no other than the “Sketch-Book” of our illustrious countryman, Washington Irving; and in glancing over his humorous description of the place, I discovered that he had stopped at the same hotel where we were then awaiting breakfast. After examining the Shakespeare House, as well as the tomb and the church in which all that is mortal of the great poet rests, we ordered a post-chaise for Warwick Castle. While the horses were harnessing, a stage-coach stopped at the hotel, and two gentlemen alighted. One was a sedate, sensible-looking man; the other an addle-headed fop. The former was mild and unassuming in his manners; the latter was all talk, without sense or meaning--in fact, a regular Charles Chatterbox. He evidently had a high opinion of himself, and was determined that all within hearing should understand that he was--somebody. Presently the sedate gentleman said: “Edward, this is Stratford. Let us go and see the house where Shakespeare was born.” “Who the devil is Shakespeare?” asked the sensible young gentleman.