the Canterbury pilgrims of the poet Chaucer. In the main it is unusually
broad and well kept, but progress will be slow at first, as the suburbs
extend a long way in this direction, and for the first twenty-five miles
one can hardly be said to be out of the city at any time. Ten miles out
the road passes Greenwich, where the British observatory is located, and
Woolwich, the seat of the great government arsenals and gun works, is
also near this point, lying directly by the river.

Nearly midway between London and Rochester is the old town of Dartford,
where we enjoyed the hospitality of the Bull Hotel for luncheon. A
dingy, time-worn, rambling old hostelry it is, every odd corner filled
with stuffed birds and beasts to an extent that suggested a museum, and
as if to still further carry out the museum feature, mine host had built
in a small court near the entrance a large cage or bird-house which was
literally alive with specimens of feathered songsters of all degrees.
The space on the first floor not occupied by these curios was largely
devoted to liquor selling, for there appeared to be at least three bars
in the most accessible parts of the hotel. However, somewhat to the rear
there was a comfortable coffee room, where our luncheon was neatly
served. We had learned by this time that all well regulated hotels in
the medium sized towns, and even in some of the larger cities--as large
as Bristol, for instance--have two dining rooms, one, generally for
tourists, called the "coffee room," with separate small tables, and a
much larger room for "commercials," or traveling salesmen, where all are
seated together at a single table. The service is practically the same,
but the ratio of charges is from two to three times higher in the coffee
room. We found many old hotels in retired places where a coffee room had
been hastily improvised, an innovation no doubt brought about largely by
the motor car trade and the desire to give the motorist more
aristocratic rates than those charged the well-posted commercials.