say fortune comes while we sleep, and, standing there, I felt
really tender enough--though otherwise most unqualified--to be
poor Mr. Searle's fortune. As I walked away I noted in one of the
little prandial pews I have described the melancholy waiter,
whose whiskered chin also reposed on the bulge of his shirt-
front. I lingered a moment beside the old inn-yard in which, upon
a time, the coaches and post-chaises found space to turn and
disgorge. Above the dusky shaft of the enclosing galleries, where
lounging lodgers and crumpled chambermaids and all the
picturesque domesticity of a rattling tavern must have leaned on
their elbows for many a year, I made out the far-off lurid
twinkle of the London constellations. At the foot of the stairs,
enshrined in the glittering niche of her well-appointed bar, the
landlady sat napping like some solemn idol amid votive brass and
plate.

The next morning, not finding the subject of my benevolent
curiosity in the coffee-room, I learned from the waiter that he
had ordered breakfast in bed. Into this asylum I was not yet
prepared to pursue him. I spent the morning in the streets,
partly under pressure of business, but catching all kinds of
romantic impressions by the way. To the searching American eye
there is no tint of association with which the great grimy face
of London doesn't flush. As the afternoon approached, however, I
began to yearn for some site more gracefully classic than what
surrounded me, and, thinking over the excursions recommended to
the ingenuous stranger, decided to take the train to Hampton
Court. The day was the more propitious that it yielded just that
dim subaqueous light which sleeps so fondly upon the English
landscape.