f THE TRAVELLERS HOME. 135 



entered the station-house, and I returned to the town, and 

 going first to the cathedral, there found J. and C. lying under 

 the trees in delighted contemplation of its beauty. 



We spent Sunday at Salisbury. We were fortunate in 

 finding a comfortable, quiet, old inn, in which we were the 

 only lodgers. After once getting acquainted with the crooked, 

 elaborate stairways and passages, and learning the relative 

 position of our chambers and the common rooms, we were as 

 much at home, as quiet, and as able to command whatever we 

 had occasion for, as if we had leased the house, furnished, and 

 manned it. The landlady was our housekeeper, the servants 

 our domestics. We saw no one but them, (till night, when 

 we happened to discover, in a remote subterranean corner, a 

 warm, smoky, stone-cavern, in which a soldier, a stage-coach 

 man, and others, were making merry with ladies, beer, and 

 song,) and them we saw only as we chose to. We had a 

 large, comfortable parlour, with dark-coloured furniture, of an 

 age in which ease was not sacrificed to elegance ; a dais and 

 bow-window, old prints of Nelson s victories and Garrick and 

 Siddons in Shakspearian characters, a smouldering sea-coal 

 fire, several country newspapers, and a second-hand last week s 

 Times. Preposterous orders were listened to without a smile, 

 receipts for novel Yankee dishes distinctly understood in all 

 their elaboration without impatience, and to the extent of the 

 resources of the establishment faithfully executed. Only once 

 was the mild business-manner of our hostess disturbed by an 

 appearance of surprise ; when we told her that we were Amer 

 icans, she raised her eyes in blank incredulity, and asked, &quot; You 

 don t mean you were born in America, sir ]&quot; The servants 

 kept out of sight ; our room was &quot; put to rights,&quot; our clothes 

 arranged in a bureau, while we were at breakfast ; and when 

 we were seated, and had got fairly under way with an ex 

 cellent home-like dinner, the girl who acted for waiter, seem- 



