to bring us to the town again; still, we spent half a day in a most delightful manner, making a tour of the “rows” and the odd corners with quaint buildings.  The tourist, fortified with his red-backed Baedecker, is a common sight to Chester people, and his “dollar-distributing” propensity, as described by the English writer I have quoted, is not unknown even to the smallest fry of the town.  Few things during our trip amused me more than the antics of a brown, bare-foot, dirt-begrimed little mite not more than two or three years old, who seized my wife’s skirts and hung on for dear life, pouring out earnestly and volubly her unintelligible jargon.  We were at first at a loss to understand what our new associate desired, and so grimly did she hang on that it seemed as if another accession to our party was assured—­but a light dawned suddenly on us, and, as the brown little hand clasped a broad English copper, our self-appointed companion vanished like a flash into a neighboring shop.

Even when touring in your “wind-shod” car, as an up-to-date English poet puts it, and though your motor waits you not a stone’s throw from your hotel, you may not entirely dispense with your antiquated equine friend as a means of locomotion.  So we learned when we proposed to visit Eaton Hall, the country place of the Duke of Westminster, which lies closely adjoining Chester, situated deep in the recesses of its eight-thousand-acre park.  A conspicuous sign, “Motors strictly forbidden,” posted near the great gateway, forced us to have recourse to the hackman, whose moderate charge of eight shillings for a party of three was almost repaid by his services as a guide.  He was voluble in his information concerning the Duke and especially dwelt on his distinction as the richest man in the world—­an honor which as good and loyal Americans we could not willingly see wrested from our own John D. of oleaginous fame.  Eaton Hall is one of the greatest English show-places, but it is modern and might well be matched by the castles of several of our American aristocracy.  Tame indeed seemed its swept and garnished newness, its trim and perfect repair, after our visits to so many time-worn places, with their long succession of hoary traditions.  The great library, with its thousands of volumes in the richest bindings and its collections of rare editions, might well be the despair of a bibliophile and the pictures and furnishings of rare interest to the connoisseur—­but these things one may find in the museums.

Over a main road, almost level and as nearly straight as any English road merits such a description, we covered the forty miles from Chester to Shrewsbury without incident.  The most trying grade given in the road-book is one in twenty-five, and all conditions are favorable for record time—­in absence of police traps.  Four miles out of Chester we passed Rowton Station, lying adjacent to Rowton Moor, where King Charles, standing on the tower of Chester