nel, guided more by his footsteps on the stone flagging than
by anything we could very distinctly see. At the end of it we came
to another iron gate, and our conductor stopped there and lit a
bull's-eye lantern. Then he unlocked the gate; and I wished he had
oiled it first, it grated so dismally. The gate swung open and we
stood on the threshold of what seemed a limitless domed and pillared
cavern, carved out of the solid darkness. The conductor and my
friend took off their hats reverently, and I did likewise. For the
moment that we stood thus there was not a sound, and the stillness
seemed to add to the solemnity of the gloom. I looked my inquiry!

"It is the tomb of the great dead of England-Westminster Abbey."...

We were among the tombs; on every hand dull shapes of men, sitting,
standing, or stooping, inspected us curiously out of the darkness
--reached out their hands toward us--some appealing, some beckoning,
some warning us away. Effigies they were--statues over the graves;
but they looked human and natural in the murky shadows. Now a
little half-grown black and white cat squeezed herself through the
bars of the iron gate and came purring lovingly about us, unawed by
the time or the place, unimpressed by the marble pomp that
sepulchers a line of mighty dead that ends with a great author of
yesterday and began with a sceptered monarch away back in the dawn
of history, more than twelve hundred years ago....

Mr. Wright flashed his lantern first upon this object and then upon
that, and kept up a running commentary that showed there was nothing
about the venerable Abbey that was trivial in his eyes or void of
interest. He is a man in authority, being superintendent, and his
daily business keeps him familiar with every nook and corner of the
great pile. Casting a luminous ray now here, now yonder, he would
say:

"Observe the height of the Abbey--one hundred and three feet to the
base of the roof; I measured it myself the other day. Notice the
base of this column--old, very old--hundreds and hundreds of years
--and how well they knew how to build in those old days! Notice it
--every stone is laid horizontally; that is to say, just as nature
laid it originally in the quarry not set up edgewise; in our day
some people set them on edge, and then wonder why they split and
flake