We come into Newcastle about lamplighting time, weary and somewhat bedraggled from our long flight over the rain-soaked roads. And Newcastle-on-Tyne, at the close of a rainy day, is about the last place to cheer one's drooping spirits. The lamps glimmer dimly through the fog as we splash along the bumpy streets to the Station Hotel--and few hostelries were more genuinely welcome during all our long wanderings. Nor is Newcastle less dingy and unattractive on the following morning--the rain is still falling and black clouds of sooty smoke hang over the place. London is bad enough under such conditions, but the Tyne city is worse and our first anxiety is to get on the open road again, although it chanced we were doomed to disappointment for much of the day. Amidst all the evidences of modern industry--the coal-mining and ship-building that have made Newcastle famous--there still linger many relics of the ancient order, memorials of the day when all was rural and quiet along the Tyne. In the very midst of the factories and shipyards at Jarrow, a suburb a few miles down the river, still stands the abbey church where some thirteen hundred years ago the Venerable Bede wrote those chronicles which form the basis of ancient English history. Thither we resolved to go and found the way with no small difficulty to the bald, half-ruined structure on the bank of a small stream whose waters reeked with chemicals from a neighboring factory. Though much restored, the walls and tower of the church are the same that sheltered the monastic brotherhood in the time of Bede, about the seventh century. The present monastic ruins, however, are of Norman origin, the older Saxon foundation having quite disappeared. Several relics of Bede are preserved in the church, among them the rude, uncomfortable chair he is said to have used. Altogether, this shrine of the Father of English History is full of interest and when musing within its precincts one will not fail to recall the story of Bede's death. For tradition has it that "He was translating St. John's Gospel into English when he was attacked by a sudden illness and felt he was dying. He kept on with his task, however, and continued dictating to his scribe, bidding him write quickly. When he was told that the book was finished, he said, 'You speak truth, all is finished now,' and after singing 'Glory to God,' he quietly passed away."