Note 249 — Chapter XVI

One night about eleven o'clock, just after finishing the discussion of certain portions of the present work, I remember asking Mr. Shaw how he happened to take the place in Hertfordshire. “Come with me and I will show you,” he said; and we wandered across the common in the moonlight over to the old English church, redolent of mystery and sanctity. Shaw pointed to the inscription on a tomb near by: “Jane Eversley. Born, 1815. Died, 1895. Her time was short.” “I thought,” said Shaw, “that if it could be truthfully said of a woman who lived to be eighty years old that her time was short, then this was just exactly the climate for me.”