OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES 



the storm from the church-goer while he yet 

 fingers at the latch of entrance. 



I doubt if there be not something beguihng 

 in a porch over the door of a country shop — 

 something that reheves the odium of bargain- 

 ing, and imbues even the small grocer with a 

 flavor of cheap hospitalities. The verandas 

 (which is but a long translation of porch) 

 that stretch along the great river front of the 

 Bellevue Hospital, diffuse somehow a glad- 

 some cheer over that prodigious caravansary 

 of the sick ; and I never see the poor creatures 

 in their bandaged heads and their flannel 

 gowns enjoying their convalescence in the sun- 

 shine of those exterior corridors, but I reckon 

 the old corridors for as much as the young 

 doctors, in bringing them from convalescence 

 into strength, and a new fight with the bedevil- 

 ments of the world. 



What shall we say, too, of inn porches? 

 Does anybody doubt their fitness ? Is there any 

 question of fhe fact— with any person of rea- 

 sonably imaginative mood— that Falstaff and 

 Nym and Bardolph, and the rest, once lolled 

 upon the benches of the porch that overhung 

 the door of the Boar's Head Tavern, East- 

 cheap? Any question about a porch, and a 

 generous one, at the Tabard, South wark— 



no 



