been both rash and impertinent in me to attempt drawing poor Miss Bacon out of her delusions, which were the condition on which she lived in comfort and joy, and in the exercise of great intellectual power.  So I left her to dream as she pleased about the treasures of Shakspeare’s tombstone, and to form whatever designs might seem good to herself for obtaining possession of them.  I was sensible of a lady-like feeling of propriety in Miss Bacon, and a New-England orderliness in her character, and, in spite of her bewilderment, a sturdy common-sense, which I trusted would begin to operate at the right time, and keep her from any actual extravagance.  And as regarded this matter of the tombstone, so it proved.

The interview lasted above an hour, during which she flowed out freely, as to the sole auditor, capable of any degree of intelligent sympathy, whom she had met with in a very long while.  Her conversation was remarkably suggestive, alluring forth one’s own ideas and fantasies from the shy places where they usually haunt.  She was indeed an admirable talker, considering how long she had held her tongue for lack of a listener,—­pleasant, sunny and shadowy, often piquant, and giving glimpses of all a woman’s various and readily changeable moods and humors; and beneath them all there ran a deep and powerful under-current of earnestness, which did not fail to produce in the listener’s mind something like a temporary faith in what she herself believed so fervently.  But the streets of London are not favorable to enthusiasms of this kind, nor, in fact, are they likely to flourish anywhere in the English atmosphere; so that, long before reaching Paternoster Row, I felt that it would be a difficult and doubtful matter to advocate the publication of Miss Bacon’s book.  Nevertheless, it did finally get published.

Months before that happened, however, Miss Bacon had taken up her residence at Stratford-on-Avon, drawn thither by the magnetism of those rich secrets which she supposed to have been hidden by Raleigh, or Bacon, or I know not whom, in Shakspeare’s grave, and protected there by a curse, as pirates used to bury their gold in the guardianship of a fiend.  She took a humble lodging and began to haunt the church like a ghost.  But she did not condescend to any stratagem or underhand attempt to violate the grave, which, had she been capable of admitting such an idea, might possibly have been accomplished by the aid of a resurrection-man.  As her first step, she made acquaintance with the clerk, and began to sound him as to the feasibility of her enterprise and his own willingness to engage in it.  The clerk apparently listened with not unfavorable ears; but, as his situation (which the fees of pilgrims, more numerous than at any Catholic shrine, render lucrative) would have been forfeited by any malfeasance in office, he stipulated for liberty to consult the vicar.  Miss Bacon requested to tell her own story to the reverend gentleman, and