ioo OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



those hang most persistently and agreeably, which 

 show their jutting, defensive rooflets to keep the 

 brunt of the storm from the church-goer while he yet 

 fingers at the latch of entrance. 



I doubt if there be not something beguiling in a 

 porch over the door of a country shop something 

 that relieves the odium of bargaining, and imbues 

 even the small grocer with a flavor of cheap hospitali- 

 ties. The verandas (which is but a long translation 

 of porch) that stretch along the great river front 

 of the Bellevue Hospital, diffuse somehow a gladsome 

 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 conva- 

 lescence in the sunshine 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 bedevilments 

 of the world. 



What shall we say, too, of inn porches ? Doep 

 anybody doubt their fitness ? Is there any question 

 of the fact with any person of reasonably imagina- 

 tive mood that Falstaff and Nym and Bavdolph. 

 and the rest, once lolled upon the benches of the 

 porch that overhung the door of the Boar's Head 

 Tavern, Eastcheap ? Any question about a porch, 

 and a generous one, at the Tabard, Southwark pre- 



