t let him linger
thirty-six hours as we did at Bethune. More would probably drive him
crazy with ennui, but this is just enough.

The road to the north ended for us at Calais. How many know Calais as
they really ought? To most travellers Calais is a mere guide-post on
the route from England or France.

Of less interest to-day, to the London tripper, than Boulogne and its
debatable pleasures, Calais is a very cradle of history and romance.

It was in October, 1775, that Sterne set out on his immortal
"sentimental journey." He put up, as the tale goes, at Dessein's
Hotel at Calais (now pulled down), and gave it such a reputation
among English-speaking people that its proprietor suddenly grew rich
beyond his wildest hopes. So much for the publicity of literature,
which, since Sterne's days, has boomed soap, cigars, and automobiles.

Sterne's familiarity with France was born of experience. He had
fallen ill in London while supervising the publication of some of his
literary works and was ordered to the south of France by his
physicians. He obtained a year's absence from his curacy, and
borrowed twenty pounds from his friend Garrick (which history, or
rumour, says he never repaid) and left for--of all places--Paris,
where a plunge into the whirl of social dissipation nearly carried
him off his feet.

Sterne and Stevenson have written more charmingly of France and
things French than any others in the English tongue, and if any one
would like to make three little pilgrimages off the beaten track, by
road or rail, by bicycle or automobile, let him follow the trail of
Sterne in his "Sentimental Journey," or Stevenson in his "Inland
Voyage" and his "Travels with a Donkey." They do not follow the
"personally conducted" tourist routes, but they give a much better
idea of France to one who wants to see things for himself.

Charles Dibdin, too, "muddled away five months at Calais," to quote
his own words. He arrived from England after a thirteen-hours'
passage in a gale of wind, in which he composed his most famous
sea-song, "Blow High, Blow Low." Travellers across the channel have
been known to occupy thirteen hours on the passage since Dibdin's
time, and seemingly, in the experience of the writer, there is not a
time when the words of the song might not apply.

We had come to Calais for the purpose of crossing the Channel for a
little tour awheel amid the natural beauties and historic shrines of
Merry England.

It takes