66 THE EXETER ROAD 



ways the gallows-like sign of tlie ' Bell ' still keeps 

 its place on the footpath, with the old original bell 

 still depending from it, although, at the moment of 

 writing, the house itself is being pulled down. But 

 the angle where the roads divide is under revision, 

 and the lioardino;s that now hide from sio-ht the old 

 shops and the red-brick house, with high-pitched roof 

 and dormer windows, that has stood here so long, will 

 give place shortly to some modern building with 

 plate-glass shop-fronts and a general air of aggressive 

 modernity which will be another link gone with the 

 Hounslow of the past. Thus it is that an illustration 

 is shown here of the ' parting of the ways ' before the 

 transformation is complete ; for although the fork of 

 the roads leading to places so distant from this point, 

 and from one another, as Bath and Exeter must 

 needs always lend something to the imagination, yet 

 a commonplace modern street building cannot, for 

 another hundred years, command respect or be worth 

 sketching, even for the sake of the significant spot 

 on which it stands. 



The would -l)e decorative gas -lamp that stands 

 here in the centre of the road bears two tin tablets 

 inscribed respectively, ' To Slough ' and ' To Staines,' 

 in a somewhat parochial fashion. They had no 

 souls, those people who inscribed these legends. Did 

 they not know that we stand here upon highways 

 famed in sono- and storv : not merelv the Hat and 

 uninteresting seven and ten miles respectively to 

 Staines and Slough, but the hundred and fifty -five 

 miles to Exeter and the ninety-five miles to Bath ? 



Here, then, we see the Bath Eoad going oft' to the 



