ating twice-told
tales in our ears, until we were thankful when oblivion and the shadow
of the hotel fell upon us.

We dined in the coffee-room,--that comfortable and often delightfully
cosy apartment fitted with little tables, and with its corner devoted to
books, to papers and conversation,--that combination of dining, tea and
reading-room unknown to an American hotel,--sacred to the sterner sex
from all time, and only opened to us within a few years,--the gates
being forced then, I imagine, by American women, who will not consent to
hide their light under a bushel, or keep to some faraway corner,
unseeing and unseen. English women, as a rule, take their meals in
their own private parlors. Perhaps because English men generally desire
the flowers intrusted to their fostering care to blush unseen. It may be
better for the gardeners; it may be better for the flowers--I cannot
tell; but we dined in the coffee-room, as Americans usually do. One of
the _clergymen_, who attend at such places, received our order. It was
not so very formidable an affair, after all, this going down by
ourselves; or would not have been, if the big-eyed waiter, who watched
our every movement, would have left us, and the military man at the next
table, who showed "the purple tide of war," or something else, in his
face, and blew his nose like a trombone, ceased to stare. As it was, we
aired our most elegant table manners. We turned in our elbows and turned
out our toes,--so to speak,--and ate our mutton with a grace that
destroyed all appetite. We tried to appear as though we had frequently
dined in the presence of a whole battalion of soldiery, under the
scrutiny of innumerable waiters,--and failed, I am sure. "With verdure
clad" was written upon every line of our faces. The occasion of this
cross fire we do not know to this day. Was it unbounded admiration? Was
it spoons?

Having brushed off the spray of the sea, having balanced ourselves upon
the solid earth, having seen St. George's Hall, there was nothing to
detain us longer, and the next morning we were on our way to London. We
had scrutinized our bill,--which might have been reckoned in pounds,
ounces, and penny-weights, for aught we knew to the contrary,--and
informed the big-eyed waiter that it was correct. We had also offered
him imploringly our largest piece of silver, which he condescended to
accept; and having been presented with a ticket and a handful of silver
and copper by the po