FROM LONDON TO NEW YORK. 229 



that is entirely admirable. You are monarch of all 

 you survey. You are not made to feel that it is in 

 some one else's house you are stopping, and that you 

 must court the master for his favor. It is your house, 

 you are the master, and you have only to enjoy your 

 own. 



In the gray, misty afternoon I walked out over 

 the Avon, like all English streams full to its grassy 

 brim, and its current betrayed only by a floating 

 leaf or feather, and along English fields and roads, 

 and noted the familiar sights and sounds and smells 

 of autumn. The spire of the church where Shake- 

 speare lies buried shot up stately and tall from the 

 banks of the Avon, a little removed from the village ; 

 and the church itself, more like a cathedral in size 

 and beauty, was also visible above the trees. Thith- 

 erward I soon bent my steps, and while I was lin- 

 gering among the graves, 1 reading the names and 

 dates so many centuries old, and surveying the gray 

 and weather-worn exterior of the church, the slow 

 tolling of the bell announced a funeral. Upon such 

 a stage, and amid such surroundings, with all this 

 past for a background, the shadowy figure of the peer- 

 less bard towering over all, the incident of the mo- 

 ment had a strange interest to me, and I looked about 

 for the funeral cortege. Presently a group of three 



1 In England the church always stands in the midst of the 

 graveyard, and hence can be approached only on foot. People, it 

 seems, never go to church in carriages or wagons, but on foot, 

 along paths and lanes. 



