The Ambleside rush-bearing takes place on the Saturday before the last Sunday in July. The more famous Grasmere rush-bearing comes on the Saturday next after St. Oswald's Day, August fifth. This year (1906) these two festivals fell just one week apart. The London papers were announcing that it was "brilliant weather in the Lakes," which, in a sense, it was, for the gleams of sunshine between the showers were like opening doors of Paradise; yet we arrived at Grasmere so wet that we paid our sixpences to enter Dove Cottage, a shrine to which we had already made due pilgrimage, and had a cosey half-hour with Mrs. Dixon, well known to the tourist world, before the fireplace whose quiet glow often gladdened the poets and dreamers of its great days gone by. Our canny old hostess, in the bonnet and shawl which seem to be her official wear, was not disposed this afternoon to talk of the Wordsworths, whom she had served in her girlhood. Her mind was on the rush-bearing for which she had baked the gingerbread forty-three years. There were five hundred squares this time, since, in addition to what would be given to the children, provision must be made for the Sunday afternoon teas throughout Grasmere. The rolling out of the dough had not grown easier with the passing of nearly half a century, and she showed us the swollen muscles of her wrist. Her little granddaughters, their flower erections borne proudly in their arms, were dressed all spick and span for the procession, and stood with her, for their pictures, at the entrance to Dove Cottage. It was still early, and we strolled over to the tranquil church beside the Rotha. Under the benediction of that grey, embattled tower, in the green churchyard with "Ridge rising gently by the side of ridge, A heaving surface," sleep Wordsworth, his sister Dorothy, and their kindred, while the names of Hartley Coleridge and Arthur Hugh Clough may be read on stones close by. We brought the poets white heather and heart's ease for our humble share in the rush-bearing. Grasmere church, with its strange row of rounded arches down the middle of the nave and its curiously raftered roof, still wears the features portrayed in _The Excursion_: "Not raised in nice proportions was the pile, But large and massy; for duration built; With pillars crowded, and the roof upheld By naked rafters intricately crossed, Like leafless underboughs, in some thick wood, All withered by the depths of shade above. Admonitory texts inscribed the walls, Each in its ornamental scroll enclosed, Each also crowned with wingèd heads--a pair Of rudely painted Cherubim. The floor Of nave and aisle, in unpretending guise, Was occupied by oaken benches ranged In seemly rows; the chancel only showed Some vain distinctions, marks of earthly state, By immemorial privilege allowed."