has equal facilities for planning tours in any part of Europe.  In fact, it is able to take in hand the full details, such as providing for transportation of the car to some port across the Channel, arranging for necessary licenses and supplying maps and road information covering the different countries of Europe which the tourist may wish to visit.  This makes it very easy for a member of the Union—­or anyone to whom it may extend its courtesies—­to go direct from Britain for a continental trip, leaving the tourist almost nothing to provide for except the difficulties he would naturally meet in the languages of the different countries.

When I showed a well posted English friend the route that had been planned, he pronounced very favorably upon it, but declared that by no means should we miss a run through the Midlands.  He suggested that I join him in Manchester on business which we had in hand, allowing for an easy run of two days to that city by way of Coventry.  On our return trip, we planned to visit many places not included in our main tour, among them the Welsh border towns, Shrewsbury and Ludlow, and to run again through Warwickshire, taking in Stratford and Warwick, on our return to London.  This plan was adopted and we left London about noon, with Coventry, nearly one hundred miles away, as our objective point.

A motor car is a queer and capricious creature.  Before we were entirely out of the crush of the city, the engine began to limp and shortly came to a stop.  I spent an hour hunting the trouble, to the entertainment and edification of the crowd of loafers who always congregate around a refractory car.  I hardly know to this minute what ailed the thing, but it suddenly started off blithely, and this was the only exhibition of sulkiness it gave, for it scarcely missed a stroke in our Midland trip of eight hundred miles—­mostly in the rain.  Nevertheless, the little circumstance, just at the outset of our tour, was depressing.

We stopped for lunch at the Red Lion in the old town of St. Albans, twenty miles to the north of London.  It is a place of much historic interest, being a direct descendant of the ancient Roman city of Verulamium; and Saint Albans, or Albanus, who gave his name to the town and cathedral and who was beheaded near this spot, was the first British martyr to Christianity of whom there is any record.  The cathedral occupies the highest site of any in England, and the square Norman tower, which owes its red coloring to the Roman brick used in its construction, is a conspicuous object from the surrounding country.  The nave is of remarkable length, being exceeded only by Winchester.  Every style of architecture is represented, from early Norman to late Perpendicular, and there are even a few traces of Saxon work.  The destruction of this cathedral was ordered by the pious Henry VIII at the time of his Reformation, but he considerately rescinded the order when the citizens of St. Albans raised money by public subscription to purchase the church.  Only an hour was given to St. Albans, much less than we had planned, but our late start made it imperative that we move onward.