adhered to, as it
was.

At midday on the fourteenth of June a few friends and ourselves saw our
dear one laid to rest in the grand old cathedral. Our small group in
that vast edifice seemed to make the beautiful words of our beautiful
burial service even more than usually solemn and touching. Later in the
day, and for many following days, hundreds of mourners flocked to the
open grave, and filled the deep vault with flowers. And even after it
was closed Dean Stanley wrote: "There was a constant pressure to the spot
and many flowers were strewn upon it by unknown hands, many tears shed
from unknown eyes."

[Picture: Charles Dickens' Grave]

And every year on the ninth of June and on Christmas day we find other
flowers strewn by other unknown hands on that spot so sacred to us, as to
all who knew and loved him. And every year beautiful bright-coloured
leaves are sent to us from across the Atlantic, to be placed with our own
flowers on that dear grave; and it is twenty-six years now since my
father died!

And for his epitaph what better than my father's own words:

"Of the loved, revered and honoured head, thou canst not turn one
hair to thy dread purposes, nor make one feature odious. It is not
that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not
that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open,
generous and true, the heart brave, warm and tender, and the pulse a
man's. Strike! shadow, strike! and see his good deeds springing from
the wound, to sow the world with life immortal."

THE END.

[Picture: Ex Libris Roxburghe Press]

Footnotes:

{15} When I write about my aunt, or "Auntie," as no doubt I may often
have occasion to do, it is of the aunt _par excellence_, Georgina
Hogarth. She has been to me ever since I can remember anything, and to
all of us, the truest, best and dearest friend, companion and counsellor.
To quote my father's own words: "The best and truest friend man ever
had."

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY FATHER AS I RECALL HIM***

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