aza-toro, "likes
an interment." Much of the land near the town is owned by a company
which, while it builds villas for the living, especially those who find
advantages in a fast train service, has named itself Necropolis, which
is grim enough for anybody living or dead. But the Necropolis Company,
whether it knows it or not, did not found the tradition. That stands to
the record of an old grave-digger interviewed by Aubrey. He conversed
grimly and with authority on the places and seasons for the proper
digging of graves. He "had a rule from his father to know when not to
dig a grave." That was "when he found a certain plant about the bigness
of the middle of a tobacco-pipe, which came near the surface of the
earth, but never above it. It is very tough, and about a yard long; the
rind of it is almost black, and tender, so that when you pluck it, it
slips off and underneath is red; it hath a small button at the top, not
much unlike the top of an asparagus; of these he sometimes finds two or
three in a grave." He was "sure it was not a fern-root" and had with
diligence traced to its root; and since he had satisfied himself of its
grisly origin, he knew better than to dig a grave near where the root
grew.

[Illustration: _View from the Bridge, Woking._]

On the maps Send looks like a single tiny village, south of Woking by
half a mile. It is in reality a large parish, and since the name is
corrupted simply from Sand, it is natural enough to find it dotted all
round the neighbourhood with other names tacked on to it--Sendholme,
Sendgrove, Sendhurst, Send Heath, and Sendmarsh. The names are scattered
only less widely than the parish itself. The church stands a mile from
the little hamlet of Send, on the banks of the Wey, like the churches of
Pyrford and Woking, and the ruins of the great Priory of Newark, to
which Send Church and her chapel at Ripley both belonged. The three
villages with their churches are still, perhaps, not much larger than
they were two or three hundred years ago; the Priory is shattered; only
the village with the chapel has grown.

By Send churchyard stands the bole of a mighty elm, riven and
iron-bound. I like to imagine that it may have been climbed by one of
the great Surrey cricketers of the old days of the Hambledon Club.
Edward Stevens, the famous "Lumpy," was born at Send, and spent his
boyhood there till he went to Chertsey and became, as John Nyren
describes him, one of the two greatest bowle