King's Head Hotel was comfortable and up-to-date, and the large room
given us, with its fire burning brightly in the open grate, was
acceptable indeed after the drive in the face of a sharp wind, which had
chilled us through. And, by the way, there is little danger of being
supplied with too many clothes and wraps when motoring in Britain. There
were very few days during our entire summer's tour when one could
dispense with cloaks and overcoats.

Coventry, with its odd buildings and narrow, crowded streets, reminded
Nathaniel Hawthorne of Boston--not the old English Boston, but its big
namesake in America. Many parts of the city are indeed quaint and
ancient, the finest of the older buildings dating from about the year
1400; but these form only a nucleus for the more modern city which has
grown up around them. Coventry now has a population of about
seventy-five thousand, and still maintains its old-time reputation as
an important manufacturing center. Once it was famed for its silks,
ribbons and watches, but this trade was lost to the French and
Swiss--some say for lack of a protective tariff. Now cycles and motor
cars are the principal products; and we saw several of the famous
Daimler cars, made here, being tested on the streets.

Coventry has three fine old churches, whose tall needlelike spires form
a landmark from almost any point of view in Warwickshire, and give to
the town the appellation by which it is often known--"The City of the
Three Spires." Nor could we well have forgotten Coventry's unique
legend, for high up on one of the gables of our hotel was a wooden
figure said to represent Peeping Tom, who earned eternal ignominy by his
curiosity when Lady Godiva resorted to her remarkable expedient to
reduce the tax levy of Coventry. Our faith in the story, so beautifully
re-told by Tennyson, will not be shaken by the iconoclastic assertion