econdarily
as places where liquid refreshment--alcoholic or otherwise--is served
with equal alacrity, but without invidious distinction.

The old-time inns of England, and their very names, have a peculiar
fascination for the stranger. Some of us who know them intimately,
and who how what discomfort and inefficient catering may lurk behind
such a picturesque nomenclature as the "Rose and Crown" or the
"Hawthorne Inn," have a certain disregard for the romance of it all.
If one is an automobilist he has all the more reason to take
cognizance of their deficiencies.

All the same the mere mention of the old-time posting-houses of the
"Bath Road," the "Great North Road" (particularly that portion
between London and Cambridge along which Dick Turpin took his famous
ride) have a glamour for us that even the automobile will not wholly
extinguish. According to story it was at one of the many inns along
the "Great North Road" that Turpin procured a bottle of wine, which
once having passed down the throat of his famous "Black Bess" enabled
the rascal to escape his pursuers. The automobilist will be fortunate
if he can find gasoline along here to-day as easily as he can that
peculiarly vile brand of beer known as "bitter."

Buntingford on the "North Road" has an inn, which, in a way, is
trying to cope with the new conditions. The landlord of the "George
and the Dragon" has come to a full realization that the motor-car has
well-nigh suppressed all other forms of road traffic for pleasure,
and, more or less incompletely, he is catering for the wants of
motorists, as did his predecessors for the traveller by
posting-carriage or stage-coach. This particular landlord, though he
looks like one of the old school, should be congratulated on a
perspicuity which few of his confreres in England possess.

There are two other inns which travellers on the "North Road" will
recognize as they fly past in their automobiles, or stop for tea or a
bite to eat, for, in spite of their devotion to the traffic in beer,
these "North Road" inns, within a radius of seventy-five or a hundred
miles of London, seem more willing to furnish solid or non-alcoholic
refreshment than most of their brethren elsewhere. The "Bell Inn" and
the "Red, White, and Blue" (and the George and the Dragon) of the
North Road in England deserve to linger in the memory of the
automobilist, almost to the exclusion of any other English inns of
their class.

With regard to hotel