followed the fine highway to Canterbury and entered the town by the west
gate of Chaucer's Tales. This alone remains of the six gateways of the
city wall in the poet's day, and the strong wall itself, with its
twenty-one towers, has almost entirely disappeared. We followed a
winding street bordered with quaint old buildings until we reached our
hotel--in this case a modern and splendidly kept hostelry. The hotel was
just completing an extensive garage, but it was not ready for occupancy
and I was directed to a well equipped private establishment with every
facility for the care and repair of motors. The excellence of the
service at this hotel attracted our attention and the head waiter told
us that the owners had their own farm and supplied their own
table--accounting in this way for the excellence and freshness of the
milk, meat and vegetables.

The long English summer evening still afforded time to look about the
town after dinner. Passing down the main street after leaving the hotel,
we found that the river and a canal wound their way in several places
between the old buildings closely bordering on each side. The whole
effect was delightful and so soft with sunset colors as to be suggestive
of Venice. We noted that although Canterbury is exceedingly ancient, it
is also a city of nearly thirty thousand population and the center of
rich farming country, and, as at Chester, we found many evidences of
prosperity and modern enterprise freely interspersed with the quaint and
time-worn landmarks. One thing which we noticed not only here but
elsewhere in England was the consummate architectural taste with which
the modern business buildings were fitted in with the antique
surroundings, harmonizing in style and color, and avoiding the
discordant note that would come from a rectangular business block such
as an American would have erected. Towns which have become known to fame
and to the dollar-distributing tourists are now very slow to destroy or
impair the old monuments and buildings that form their chief
attractiveness, and the indifference that prevailed generally fifty or a
hundred years ago has entirely vanished. We in America think we can
afford to be iconoclastic, for our history is so recent and we have so
little that commands reverence by age and association; yet five hundred
years hence our successors will no doubt bitterly regret this spirit of
their ancestors, just as many ancient towns in Britain lament the folly