Ludlow. Our stay was
only a short one, since our route was to bring us to the town again;
still, we spent half a day in a most delightful manner, making a tour of
the "rows" and the odd corners with quaint buildings. The tourist,
fortified with his red-backed Baedecker, is a common sight to Chester
people, and his "dollar-distributing" propensity, as described by the
English writer I have quoted, is not unknown even to the smallest fry of
the town. Few things during our trip amused me more than the antics of a
brown, bare-foot, dirt-begrimed little mite not more than two or three
years old, who seized my wife's skirts and hung on for dear life,
pouring out earnestly and volubly her unintelligible jargon. We were at
first at a loss to understand what our new associate desired, and so
grimly did she hang on that it seemed as if another accession to our
party was assured--but a light dawned suddenly on us, and, as the brown
little hand clasped a broad English copper, our self-appointed
companion vanished like a flash into a neighboring shop.

Even when touring in your "wind-shod" car, as an up-to-date English poet
puts it, and though your motor waits you not a stone's throw from your
hotel, you may not entirely dispense with your antiquated equine friend
as a means of locomotion. So we learned when we proposed to visit Eaton
Hall, the country place of the Duke of Westminster, which lies closely
adjoining Chester, situated deep in the recesses of its
eight-thousand-acre park. A conspicuous sign, "Motors strictly
forbidden," posted near the great gateway, forced us to have recourse to
the hackman, whose moderate charge of eight shillings for a party of
three was almost repaid by his services as a guide. He was voluble in
his information concerning the Duke and especially dwelt on his
distinction as the richest man in the world--an honor which as good and
loyal Americans we could not willingly see wrested from our own John D.
of oleaginous fame. Eaton Hall is one of the greatest English
show-places, but it is modern and might well be matched by the castles
of several of our American aristocracy. Tame indeed seemed its swept and
garnished newness, its trim and perfect repair, after our visits to so
many time-worn places, with their long succession of hoary traditions.
The great library, with its thousands of volumes in the richest
bindings and its collections of rare editions, might well be the despair
of a bibliophile and th