102 AN AMERICAS' FARMER IX ENGLAND. 



" The Sun and Apple Tree," The Colliers' Arms," " The Arms 

 of Man," "The Malt Shovel," etc., etc. 



Instead of columns and a hand-rail, or a dead wall on the street 

 side of the row, it is now and then contracted by a room, which 

 is sometimes occupied by a shop, and sometimes seems to be used 

 as a vestibule and staircase to apartments overhead, for we see a 

 brass plate with the resident's name, and a bell-pull, at the door. 



On the inner side there are frequent entrances to the narrow 

 passages that I mentioned, which may be long substitutes for 

 streets, communicating, after a deal of turning and splitting into 

 branches, with some distant alley or churchyard, with the front 

 doors of wealthy citizens' houses opening upon them ; or they may 

 be merely alleys between two tenements leading to a common yard 

 in the rear ; or again, if you turn into one, it may turn out to be 

 a private hall, and after one or two short turns, end in a kitchen. 

 Never mind don't retreat ; put on a bold face, take a seat by 

 the fire as if you were at home, and call for a mug of beer. Ten 

 to one it will be all right. Almost every other housekeeper seems 

 to be a licensed taverner. 



We had great sport while nominally engaged in finding lodg- 

 ings to suit us. Many of the places at which we applied were 

 merely houses of refreshment, and had no spare bed-rooms. In 

 one of these, " The Boot Inn," we found an old sea-captain, who, 

 some twenty years ago, had traded to New York, and enjoyed 

 talking and making inquiries about persons he had met and 

 places he had visited. Fortunately we knew some of them, and 

 so were constrained to sit down to bread and cheese and beer, 

 and listen to some tough yarns of Yellow Jack and Barbary 

 pirates. At one end of the kitchen was a table with benches on 

 three sides of it, and a great arm-chair on the other. Over the 

 chair hung a union-jack, and before it on the table was a strongly 

 bound book, which proved to be " The Record of the Boot Inn 



