Penzance is another of the South of England resort towns and is beautifully situated on Mounts Bay.  One indeed wonders at the great number of seacoast resorts in Britain, but we must remember that there are forty millions of people in the Kingdom who need breathing places as well as a number of Americans who come to these resorts.  The hotels at these places are generally excellent from the English point of view, which differs somewhat from the American.  Probably there is no one point on which the difference is greater than the precise temperature that constitutes personal comfort and makes a fire in the room necessary.  On a chilly, muggy day when an American shivers and calls for a fire in the generally diminutive grate in his room, the native enjoys himself or even complains of the heat, and is astonished at his thin-skinned cousin, who must have his room—­according to the British notion—­heated to suffocation.  The hotel manager always makes a very adequate charge for fires in guest-rooms and is generally chary about warming the corridors or public parts of the hotel.  In one of the large London hotels which actually boasts of steam heat in the hallways, we were amazed on a chilly May day to find the pipes warm and a fine fire blazing in the great fireplace in the lobby.  The chambermaid explained the astonishing phenomenon:  the week before several Americans had complained frequently of the frigid atmosphere of the place without exciting much sympathy from the management, but after they had left the hotel, it was taken as an evidence of good faith and the heat was turned on.  But this digression has taken me so far away from Penzance that I may as well close this chapter with it.

VII

FROM CORNWALL TO SOUTH WALES

In following a five-thousand-mile motor journey through Britain, there will be little to say of Penzance, a pleasant resort town, yet without anything of notable importance.  A mile farther down the coast is Newlyn, a fishing-village which has become a noted resort for artists and has given its name to a school of modern painting.  A handsome building for a gallery and art institute, and which also serves as headquarters for the artists, has recently been erected by a wealthy benefactor.  We walked over to the village, hoping to learn that the fisher-fleet would be in the next morning, but were disappointed.  A man of whom we inquired informed us that the fishermen would not bring in their catch until two days later.  He seemed to recognize at once that we were strangers—­Americans, they all know it intuitively—­and left his task to show us about the immense quay where the fishermen dispose of their catch at auction.  He conducted us out on the granite wall, built by the Government to enclose the harbor and insuring the safety of the fisher-fleet in fiercest storms.  He had been a deep-sea fisherman himself and told us much of the life of these sturdy fellows and the hardships they endure for little pay.