I was pushed back against the wall, and then observed that I stood by the London Stone--a stone which "'midst the tangling horrors of the wood" by Thames side, may have been drenched with the human gore of druidical sacrifices. Captives bound in wicker rods may have burned upon its venerable surface to glut the fury of savage gods. That stone stood here when Constantine built the London Wall around the "citty." It was here when, upon an island formed by a river which crept sullenly through "a fearful and terrible plain," which none might approach after nightfall without grievous danger, King Sebert of the East Saxons built to the glory of St. Peter the Apostle that church which is known to our generation as Westminster Abbey. The London Stone stood when Sebert built a church on the ruins of Diana's Temple, where now stands St. Paul's Cathedral. London was built before Rome, before the fall of the Assyrian monarchs, over a thousand years before the birth of Jesus Christ. Who knows? Where I stood, old Chaucer may have stood to see his Canterbury Pilgrims pass. Falstaff, reeling home from Dame Quickly's Tavern with his load of sherris-sack, may have sat here to ponder on his honour. Shakespeare may have leaned on the old milestone as he watched the Virgin Queen's pageant to Tilbury Fort in Armada times. Through James Ball's and Jack Cade's uprising, through the Wars of the Roses, the Fire of London, the Plague, the Stuart upheaval, and Cromwell's stirring times--through all these the London Stone stood, "fixed in the ground very deep," says Stowe, "that if carts do runne against it through negligence the wheels be broken, and the stone itself unshaken." And now it links the bustle and roar of modern London with the strife out of which London grew, and keeps our conceits reminded of the forefathers who lived and fought in Britain here to make the way more smooth for us. Ere cabs or omnibuses were; ere telephones, telegraphs, or railways; ere Magna Charta; before William the Conqueror brought our ancient nobility's ancestors over from Normandy--London knew this stone. It has endured longer than any king, it has survived generations and dynasties of monarchs. "Walls have ears," they say, and Shakespeare "finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, and sermons in stones." What a tale would he tell that could find the tongue of the London Stone! Think of all the men and women who have passed it, seen it with their eyes, felt it with their hands; the millions of simple, faithful, anonymous people who have cheerfully slaved, and bled, and died, to help--as each according to his lights conceived--the honour, safety, and well-being of his country. We have paid homage to the celebrated dead: what about those that have done their duty and have received neither fame nor monument? Their blood, too, cries out to me from the paving-stones of London.