Thomas Parr, who won that great honor because men said he was 152 years old, and Thomas let them say so, for the rumor brought him cakes and ale, but he was no more 152 than you are. But these Englishmen, when you come to their grand central shrine, open out into a wonderful hospitality. Let death once set his seal in our time on a man of a superb genius or heroism, and they love to gather the dust then into the grand old minster. You find Puritans there and Catholics and skeptics side by side, and Elizabeth lies near to Mary, the woman she put to death, and Pitt close to his life-long rival, Fox. Poets and painters, authors and actors, inventors and builders, novelists and divines, soldiers and Quak

ers.

"Do your stroke of work for me and mine," the old mother says, " and win your right and you shall have your welcome. I reserve this one church for my noblest children and ask no more questions when they have made full proof of their nobility."

And so this summer I went once and again to the grand old Abbey church. The first time it was crowded with the people, who went there in the main to visit the grave of England's grand old man, Gladstone. I stood by his grave also, but could not wander through the old fane and muse and touch the great old memories. But after some days, I went again, when all was quiet and but a few were there, wandered through the dear old place, sat down when I was tired, and dreamed

of the days that are no more. It was the choicest visit I have ever made. It will stay with me all my life now. I needed no guide. I held it in my heart. I saw the solemn processions of 800 years, the living and the dead, and said, "After life's fitful fever, they all sleep well." Then I came out into the sunshine and the great city that held the conqueror at bay until he wrote the parchment they still treasure, and swore to refrain from touching her ancient liberties, the city which for 800 years has never seen the enemy from another land at her gates. And to the square to see the great lions, the emblem of the mighty manhood from whose loins we sprang. And then on, it may be that same day, to the House of Commons and heard two speeches, each of an hour, from Harcourt and Chamberlain. They were speeches well worth hearing, but the best in each to me was at the close, when for no special reason in the substance of what had been said, each man grew eloquent on the fair promise of the time, and as they trusted for all time, in the heart-beat of America toward England and of England toward the Republic, to which I said Amen, with all my heart.

THE PILGRIMS

THE landing of the Pilgrims has been nursed in the heart of New England, and touched by her genius, until it has come to be accepted in our time as one of the most pregnant events in the history of this new world and of man. And Plymouth rock, or the fragment, rather, that is left of it, has been lifted in the fond imagination until it stands so high and clear against the sky, that you might easily conclude some such change had been made in the sea line as that they notice on the coasts of Denmark where, within a time they can measure, the crags which were covered once by the ever returning tides, are lifted now to such an eminence as to be landmarks to men out at sea.

The painter in both worlds has blended his choicest colors to portray the ship, the shore, and the quaint little company looking over toward the new home they are to have and to hold while the world stands. The poets have sung to the painters and to all who have ears to hear, so that their strains storm you like the sound of trumpets and the voice of an host. Webster in the prime of his days touches the great story with his choicest eloquence when two hundred years have come and gone since the pilgrims came ashore for good and all,

blending the passion of the poet with the calm insight of the statesman, and striking the keynote for all who follow after him, touching the fountains of joy here, and there of tears, and speaking to such a purpose that after all this time his discourse keeps one space beautifully sweet and green over against the withering which fell on his own old age. It is no wonder, therefore, that those who find they are children of these Pilgrims after the spirit, though kinship after the flesh can never be theirs to be proud of and glad for, should feel drawn to this story which has come to be the first gem in the crown of our nation's dignity; and that we should not be satisfied to meet on Pilgrim's day and celebrate the event by festivals which stand in such sharp contrast to the hungry outlook they faced so bravely who had to endure the winter of 1620 and the summer too, as things turned out, and had to endure other winters and summers heavy with disaster and death, to face the saddest of all experiences when the children cry for bread and the mothers have none to give them ample enough to lift the cloud from the small pinched faces and to hide utter content in the eager wondering eyes. Nor can we leave the bounty the land gives now out of the reckoning when we weigh the motives which stirred the hearts of these Pilgrims to their sublime adventure, because we have to remember they were English men and women and then to remember that your genuine Englishman has never set himself to solve the

problem of how little a man may live on and still make his stroke, but how much he can win that the stroke may be made to the surest purpose while the man stands square on his feet and faces the horizon of his desire.

Two things troubled the Pilgrims during their sojourn in Holland which are still vital as ever in the children of the great old mother. They could not bear to think of a day when their sons and daughters would forget the grand traditions of the old mother-land and lose their identity in that fine race that had said to the sea "thus far shalt thou come and no further and here shall thy proud waves be stayed"; but had welcomed the sea as their defense against a more fatal tyranny. And then they could not bear to see what we have to notice in thousands who come to our shores, the poor bent backs and lackluster eyes, and the faces grown old before their time which come through overwork and poor scant fare, and which was coming to them in the land where they had fled for shelter.

But once more they were stirred by deeper and diviner motives than these, and so they came not only for the living but for what we may call dear life, and this makes their landing matter for Sunday thought as well as for week day eulogy, and compels us to see in them the sifted and selected seed for God's sowing over here. In the eighty-five years which had come and gone since Henry the king assumed the title of supreme head