before the task was done. The King of England gave him a trip to the Mediterranean, for the benefit of his health, but it was of no avail. Sir Walter returned to his home on the bank of the Tweed, and died September twenty-first, 1832. In his last illness, this great author, who had produced so many volumes that were being read then and are still being read, asked his son-in-law to read to him. The son-in-law asked what book he should read, to which Sir Walter replied: "Book? There is but one Book! Read me the Bible." In Melrose I visited the ruins of the Abbey, and then went on to Wigan.

After the annual meeting, I went to Birmingham and stayed a short while. From here I made a little journey to the birth-place of Shakespeare, at Stratford-on-Avon, a small, quiet town, where, to the best of my recollection, I saw neither street cars nor omnibuses. After being in several large cities, it was an agreeable change to spend a day in this quiet place, where the greatest writer in the English tongue spent his boyhood and the last days of his life on earth. The house where he was born was first visited. A fee of sixpence (about twelve cents) secures admission, but another sixpence is required if the library and museum are visited. The house stands as it was in the poet's early days, with a few exceptions. Since that time, however, part of it has been used as a meat market and part as an inn. In 1847, the property was announced for sale, and it fell into the hands of persons who restored it as nearly as possible to its original condition.

It has two stories and an attic, with three gables in the roof facing the street. At the left of the door by which the tourist is admitted, is a portion of the house where the valuable documents of the corporation are stored, while to the right are the rooms formerly used as the "Swan and Maidenhead Inn," now converted into a library and museum. The windows in the upstairs room where the poet was born are fully occupied with the autographs of visitors who have scratched their names there. I was told that the glass is now valuable simply as old glass, and of course the autographs enhance the value. The names of Scott and Carlyle are pointed out by the attendant in charge. From a back window one can look down into the garden, where, as far as possible, all the trees and flowers mentioned in Shakespeare's works have been planted. For some years past the average number of visitors to this house has been seven thousand a year. The poet's grave is in Trinity Church, at Stratford, beneath a stone slab in the floor bearing these lines:

  "Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbear
  To digg the dust enclosed here.
  Blest be ye man y spares these stones,
  And curst be he ty moves my bones."

On the wall, just at hand, is a bust made from a cast taken after his death. Near by is a stained-glass window with the inscription, "America's gift to Shakespeare's church," and not far away is a card above a collection-box with an inscription which informs "visitors from U.S.A." that there is yet due on the window more than three hundred dollars. The original cost was about two thousand five hundred dollars. The Shakespeare Memorial is a small theater by the side of the Avon, with a library and picture gallery attached. The first stone was laid in 1877, and the building was opened in 1879 with a performance of "Much Ado About Nothing." The old school once attended by the poet still stands, and is in use, as is also the cottage of Anne Hathaway, situated a short distance from Stratford. I returned to Birmingham, and soon went on to Bristol and saw the orphans' homes founded by George Muller.

These homes, capable of accommodating two thousand and fifty orphans, are beautifully situated on Ashley Downs. Brother William Kempster and I visited them together, and were shown through a portion of one of the five large buildings by an elderly gentleman, neat, clean, and humble, who was sent down by the manager of the institution, a son-in-law of Mr. Muller, who died in 1898, at the advanced age of ninety-three years. We saw one of the dormitories, which was plainly furnished, but everything was neat and clean. We were also shown two dining-rooms, and the library-room in which Mr. Muller conducted a prayer-meeting only a night or two before his death. In this room we saw a fine, large picture of the deceased, and were told by the "helper" who was showing us around that Mr. Muller was accustomed to saying: "Oh, I am such a happy man!" The expression on his face in this picture is quite in harmony with his words just quoted. One of his sayings was: "When anxiety begins, faith ends; when faith begins, anxiety ends."

Mr. Muller spent seventy years of his life in England and became so thoroughly Anglicized that he wished his name pronounced "Miller." He was the founder of the "Scriptural Knowledge Institution for Home and Abroad" and was a man of much more than ordinary faith. His work began about 1834, with the distribution of literature, and the orphan work, if I mistake not, was begun two years later. "As the result of prayer to God" more than five millions of dollars have been applied for the benefit of the orphans. He never asked help of man, but made his wants known to God, and those who are now carrying on the work pursue the same course, but the collection-boxes put up where visitors can see them might be considered by some as an invitation to give. The following quotation from the founder of the orphanages will give some idea of the kind of man he was. "In carrying on this work simply through the instrumentality of prayer and faith, without applying to any human being for help, my great desire was, that it might be seen that, now, in the nineteenth century, God is still the Living God, and now, as well as thousands of years ago, he listens to the prayers of his children and helps those who trust in him. In all the forty-two countries through which I traveled during the twenty-one years of my missionary service, numberless instances came before me of the benefit which this orphan institution has been, in this respect, not only in making men of the world see the reality of the things of God, and by converting them, but especially by leading the children of God more abundantly to give themselves to prayer, and by strengthening their faith. Far beyond what I at first expected to accomplish, the Lord has been pleased to give me. But what I have seen as the fruit of my labor in this way may not be the thousandth part of what I shall see when the Lord Jesus comes again; as day by day, for sixty-one years, I have earnestly labored, in believing prayer, that God would be pleased, most abundantly, to bless this service in the way I have stated."

The objects of the Scriptural Knowledge Institution are set forth as follows: "To assist day schools and Sunday-schools in which instruction is given upon scriptural principles," etc. By day schools conducted on scriptural principles, they mean "those in which the teachers are believers; where the way of salvation is pointed out, and in which no instruction is given opposed to the principles of the Gospel." In these schools the Scriptures are read daily by the children. In the Sunday-schools the "teachers are believers, and the Holy Scriptures alone are the foundation of instruction." The second object of the Institution is "to circulate the Holy Scriptures." In one year four thousand three hundred and fifty Bibles were sold, and five hundred and twenty-five were given away; seven thousand eight hundred and eighty-one New Testament were sold, and one thousand five hundred and seventy-four were given away; fifty-five copies of the Psalms were sold, and thirty-eight were given away; two thousand one hundred and sixty-three portions of the Holy Scriptures were sold, and one hundred and sixty-two were given away; and three thousand one hundred illustrated portions of the Scriptures were given away. There have