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364 Navvies' and General Labourers' Union expressed their admiration for his "noble works and genuine counsel," "the seed that so noble a man sowed in his great and useful life." On behalf of a Lancashire Branch of the Social Democratic Federation their secretary wrote, "Comrade Morris is not dead there is not a Socialist living whould belive him dead for he Lives in the heart of all true men and women still and will do so to the end of time." In even simpler words one of the textile workers at Merton Abbey wrote to Mrs. Morris, "Dear Madam, I loved and honoured my Master, therefore I mourn with you, excuse this intrusion, I cannot help it. May God support and comfort you is the prayer of your faithful servant."

In the Northern Sagas, as in the heroic cycle of ancient Greece, a man's life is not fully ended till he has been laid under ground, and the accident of death has been followed by the sacred offices of burial. That reluctance to end the story, to part with its hero until the funeral pyre was out and the last valediction over, was an attitude of mind which Morris himself specially loved; and if we may believe that any sense of the last rites performed over them may touch the dead, he might find a last satisfaction in the simple and impressive ceremony of his funeral. He was buried in the little churchyard of Kelmscott on the 6th of October. The night had been wet, and morning lightened dully over soaking meadows, fading away in a blur of mist. As the day went on, the wind and rain both increased, and rose in the afternoon to a tempest. The storm, which raged with great violence over the whole country, with furious southwesterly gales, reached its greatest force in the upper Thames valley. The low- lying lands were flooded,