n of rest and
refreshment, exchanging hot and dusty boots for slippers, and going
through other preliminaries to a comfortable time of it. Rang the
bell for dinner, but before ordering it, asked the waiting-maid,
with a complacent idea that I had improved my walking pace, and made
more than half the way--

"How far is it to Saffron Walden?"

"Twelve miles, sir."

"Twelve miles, indeed! Why, it is only twelve miles from Great
Bardfield!"

"Well, this is Great Bardfield, sir."

"Great Bardfield! What! How is this? What do you mean?"

She meant what she said, and it was as true as two and two make
four; and she was not to be beaten out of it by a stare of
astonishment, however a discomfited man might expand his eyes with
wonder, or cloud his face with chagrin. It was a patent fact.
There, on the opposite side of the street, was the house in which I
slept the night before; and here, just coming up to the door of the
inn, was the good lady of my host. Her form and voice, and other
identifications dispelled the mist of the mistake; and it came out
as clear as day that I had followed the direction of my host, to
bear to the left, far too liberally, and that I had been walking at
my best speed in a "vicious circle" for full two hours and a half,
and had landed just where I commenced, at least within the breadth
of a narrow street of the same point.

My good friends urged me to stop and dine with them, and then make a
fair start for the end of my week's journey. But it was still
twelve miles to Saffron Walden, and I was determined to put half of
them behind me before dinner. So, taking a second leave of them in
the course of three hours, I set out again on my walk, a wiser man
in the practical understanding of the proverb, "The longest way
around is the shortest way there." At 2 p.m. I reached Thaxted,
and rectified my first notion of the town, formed when I mistook it
for Bardfield. Having made six miles extra between the two points,
I resumed my walk after a short delay at the latter.

The weather was glorious. A cloudless sun shone upon a little sky-
crystalled world of beauty, smaller in every dimension than you ever
see in America. And this is a feature of English scenery that will
strike the American traveller most impressively at the first glance,
whether he looks at it by night or day. It is not that Nature, in
adjusting the symmetries of her scenic structures, nicely apportions
the skyscape to