read of the number of times the hostelry has been reconstructed.

The present inn is old enough for any of us, and means a good deal to the citizens of Newburyport, as a Peabody once lived in it. There are two staircases, one early Victorian and ugly, belonging to Mr. Peabody, and one colonial and beautiful, belonging to the house next door; for the tavern has taken to spreading. I insisted upon rooms reached by this spiral staircase, for it curves so delicately that it would seem the way to heaven.

I asked the old negro porter, later, what the town was principally noted for, and he answered its purity and the landing here of the Siamese twins. He added that they were both dead, and I do not know whether he referred to the two attractions, purity and the Siamese, or simply to the twins.

I was shocked that he did not speak of Washington and Lafayette, who had slept in a neighboring mansion, but notables. who were not freakish by nature he held in small esteem. Even the hotel clerk was rather blasé about these distinguished guests, opining that the two gentlemen, if one could judge by tablets all over the country, slept more than any other men in history.

His Newburyport favorite was Lord Timothy Dexter, who was not a lord at all, but had longed so ardently to be one that the title attached itself to him by force of the thought. He was an eccentric creature who, in colonial days, lived in one of those great houses I had seen by moonlight and sworn never to see again. He was a philosopher, if saying you are makes you one, and wrote a little book of precepts that have no merit whatever beyond the quaintness of the phrasing. Once upon a time, as a joke, he sent a boat-load of warming-pans to the West Indies, although I don't know on whom the joke was except on himself for his expenditure. But the cargo was the wisdom of a fool, for the warming-pans were applied to ladling up cane-sugar, and Lord Dexter grew even more rich through his folly.

All this is very well to talk about sitting on the front porch of the tavern of a late summer's morning, but, from my own acquaintance with village cut-ups, I can imagine what a bore he must have been in his day, and how he found our wide street of the night before as empty as did we when he sallied forth for a promenade.

He served, however, along with the Siamese twins and the porter and the old house across the street, which Stanford White greatly admired, to bring the personal equation strongly into Newburyport. Its Puritanism was nicely blended with fine tales of privateering, of prize-ships towed into the harbor, and, quite at variance with these attractions, but of special. interest to us now, of the attitude of the dames of the town during the distressful times of the Revolution. For it was the custom of these ladies "to meet and dedicate a few glasses to the following truly sentimental and highly republican toasts:

1. May our beloved President preside at the helm of government longer than we shall have time to tell his years.

2. Mrs. Washington, respected consort of our illustrious chief.

3. May the fair patriots of America never fail to assert their independence, which nature equally dispenses.

4. Marie Charlotte Corday. May each Columbian daughter, like her, be ready to sacrifice their life to liberty.

5. The day that saw the wondrous hero rise shall, more than all our sacred days, be blessed."

That was five drinks. If a suffrage dinner-party in this day filled their glasses at all, the cause would be lost. I cite this to prove that we women, while expanding in our demands, are contracting in our beverages.

The world is getting better. We were shown an old bill for liquors concocted at the tavern and drunk by gentlemen of distinction. The sum total amounted to £59, of which only £7, so far as I could make out, was ever paid. W— asked

the clerk if we could get away with anything like that, and he replied very firmly that we could not. So there seemed nothing to do but to pay our account and go

on.

We were now on the Bay Road of 1640, with every wrinkle so removed from its old face that it made me long to have a steam roller at my own command. It was a homely way in the real sense of the word, for the air was full of the odor of autumn pickling. Housewives peered out of the doors to see if we were the vinegar they had sent for, and went back to their stoves disgustedly, seeing we were not.

The smell changed to the less pleasant one of tanned leather as we came to Ipswich, and we stopped before one factory, with soles drying in the sun, to ask where we could find the Whipple house. We wanted the Whipple house because we wanted to see the Breeches Bible. That is, the illustrator wanted to see it. The Bibles which had been left by the Gideons were good enough for me. Besides, I was afraid to see the Breeches Bible for fear the illustrator was right.

It was his contention that this famous book, of which we spoke glibly and knew little, was given the name because it was the first Bible small enough to go into a breeches' pocket. After saying this must be wrong, I stuck to it, although inwardly asking myself why it should be called that if it did not have something to do with trousers. I endeavored to weaken the illustrator's attitude, which was growing more arrogant every minute, by asking him whose breeches it was that carried this Bible, and, after a minute's hesitation, he said Mr. Whipple's breeches, because it was to be shown in the Whipple house.

This I was sure was an error, and he must have felt that he had gone a little too far with his deductions, for we never found the old mansion in Ipswich. He tried to, he claimed. He went up to several doorsteps by himself and asked for something or other. I could hear him mumbling out a question, but I believe it concerned the road to Essex.

No one could mistake the Essex route, and few could have been any happier than were we despite dissension. The road underfoot was rutless, sky overhead cloudless; there were elm-shaded villages, reddyed downs, and, far off, white patches of sand amid strips of blue water. More than that, we were going to stop off for a day or two and see some friends. At last we were to have an opportunity to use our golf-clubs. Just why we should choose friends living on a small island off the mainland as those most likely to give us a game of golf is something not to be answered with any credit to ourselves.

After a time we were being rowed in a small boat to a cottage on a rocky promontory, with the high tide encircling half of it, while our motor talked over our trip to our friends' motors in a garage on the mainland. I should like to go on writing of our life on the island, and of the golf we did n't play. But I am again frigidly reminded that this is a motoring story, and that the real tour carried us through Essex to Gloucester. So I must hurry you on, and say nothing of the waves lapping my room at night, or of the red flag hung out in the morning, and how the lobster-man, seeing the signal, rowed directly to the door with his catch. At least I can say nothing more than this, except to advise the tourist to spend part of his time along the Massachusetts coast. I know that I have advised him to linger on each day's run, but, upon retrospect, I know no playground more lovely than what is known as the North Shore.

Chief in interest to the reader may be the behavior of our island hosts when we mentioned the Breeches Bible. They were from Boston, and we knew their culture was sufficient to embrace complete knowledge of this sartorial volume at the Whipple mansion. But they showed nothing but an overdeveloped sense of humor when we told them our story, refusing to enlighten us beyond gasping out, "In Mr. Whipple's pocket-oh, Moses!"

All this mysterious reticence drove me to our own New York library as soon as

I'could shake the dust of the tour from my

clothes. I had grown fearful of any further questioning among my friends, but one has no shame before the librarians. We grant them superior creatures at the start. The first one whom I attacked in the history room behaved unusually, for, instead of raining heavy tomes down on me from the gallery, he unlocked a door and told me, "Third turning to the right, and there it is."

He then pushed me away unwillingly, while I muttered that "it" was at Ipswich; that all I wanted was to know about it, and that a small encyclopedia would be sufficient. I reiterated this same speech to a blond young man at the third door to the right, who did not hear me out, but turned on his heel, and came back with a good-sized volume in a new binding. He was apologetic about the binding. He was sorry that it was new, but their first edition was under lock and key.

I was inclined to be severe with him. I told him that the Breeches Bible was at the Whipple house at Ipswich, unless (I dwelt upon this) it had recently been stolen. But he was not at all resentful. He said all of the Bibles printed at Geneva in 1560 were Breeches Bibles, and he did not laugh when I cried out in despair over the size pockets must have been to carry such large volumes. He was accustomed to ignoramuses like me. He very gently, something in the manner of a physician, turned to the third chapter of Genesis, walking modestly away while I read these words:

Then the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig-tree leaves together, and made themselves breeches.

"So," continued the young man, not looking at me, "such editions that employed this word were classed under the head of the Breeches Bible."

And the worst of it is, I remember now having learned that at school, and the illustrator remembers having learned it also.

We left for Gloucester at the hour we had arrived in Essex a few days be

fore, so the running time was not confused in our simple minds. Gloucester is on a peninsula, and one can cut it out altogether; but if he does, he will miss the quaintest seaport on the route, and millions of codfish drying in the sun, like the leather soles. The Gloucester boats still go to the Banks. Some do not return, and every spring there is a service at the water's-edge, when flowers are thrown upon the surface, to be carried out by the tide for those who did not come back.

car.

The wharves and boats are so picturesquely ragged that I thought we had lost the illustrator forever. The chauffeur and I broiled in the sun as we sat in the We were alongside a ship in drydock, and I agonized over the effort it must take to get the vessels up this incline. A workman-not working-told me nothing could be easier: once get them on the ways, and they can be pulled up by hand. It still seemed a difficult process to me, and our young driver, whose life is far removed from dry-docks, mistook ways for waves, and remarked, to the great disgust of the workman, that he would n't have thought the waves were big enough to get a boat on them.

We ate a "shore dinner," consisting of fish "just in that morning," and clams cooked in four different fashions. While the fish was fresh, the coffee was so stale that I asked in all sincerity if it really was coffee. The waitress gathered up my cup with the avowed intention of getting some made. "I'm a coffee-drinker myself," she said sympathetically. She was an amiable girl, prefacing her attendance upon us by saying that "It sure was one grand day."

Another villager remained simpatico from first to last. We stopped in the narrow main street to ask for an art store of a policeman big enough for New York to entrap and carry away. The shop was directly in front of us, this causing a laugh at the illustrator's expense, which engendered a friendliness between the policeman and me.

We got along so exceedingly well that I told him one of Gloucester's most prom