208 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



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 Shakespeare 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 beautv, was also visible 

 above the trees. Thitherward I soon bent my steps, 

 and while I was lingering among the graves, 1 reading 

 the names and dates so many centuries old, and survey- 

 ing 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 tow r ering over all, the incident of the moment 

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

 the funeral cortege. Presently a group of three or 

 four figures appeared at the head of the avenue of 



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. 



