the name.  It was Ethelbert who died in 616.  The name Sebert does not appear in any Saxon annals accessible to the author.]—­and that’s as much, as twelve hundred and fifty years ago think of it!  Twelve hundred and fifty years!  Now yonder is the last one—­Charles Dickens—­there on the floor, with the brass letters on the slab—­and to this day the people come and put flowers on it....  There is Garrick’s monument; and Addison’s, and Thackeray’s bust—­and Macaulay lies there.  And close to Dickens and Garrick lie Sheridan and Dr. Johnson—­and here is old Parr....

“That stone there covers Campbell the poet.  Here are names you know pretty well—­Milton, and Gray who wrote the Elegy, and Butler who wrote Hudibras; and Edmund Spenser, and Ben Jonson—­there are three tablets to him scattered about the Abbey, and all got ’O, Rare Ben Jonson’ cut on them.  You were standing on one of them just now he is buried standing up.  There used to be a tradition here that explains it.  The story goes that he did not dare ask to be buried in the Abbey, so he asked King James if he would make him a present of eighteen inches of English ground, and the King said ‘yes,’ and asked him where he would have it, and he said in Westminster Abbey.  Well, the King wouldn’t go back on his word, and so there he is, sure enough-stood up on end.”

The reader may regret that there are not more of these entries, and that the book itself was never written.  Just when he gave up the project is not recorded.  He was urged to lecture in London, but declined.  To Mrs. Clemens, in September, he wrote: 

Everybody says lecture, lecture, lecture, but I have not the least idea of doing it; certainly not at present.  Mr. Dolby, who took Dickens to America, is coming to talk business tomorrow, though I have sent him word once before that I can’t be hired to talk here; because I have no time to spare.  There is too much sociability; I do not get along fast enough with work.

In October he declared that he was very homesick, and proposed that Mrs. Clemens and Susie join him at once in London, unless she would prefer to have him come home for the winter and all of them return to London in the spring.  So it is likely that the book was not then abandoned.  He felt that his visit was by no means ended; that it was, in fact, only just begun, but he wanted the ones he loved most to share it with him.  To his mother and sister, in November, he wrote: 

I came here to take notes for a book, but I haven’t done much but attend dinners and make speeches.  I have had a jolly good time, and I do hate to go away from these English folks; they make a stranger feel entirely at home, and they laugh so easily that it is a comfort to make after-dinner speeches here.  I have made hundreds of friends; and last night, in the crush at the opening of the new Guild Hall Library and Museum, I was surprised to meet a familiar face every other step.