rob the English
port of one of its most thrilling attractions."

Folkestone is more sadly respectable than Dover; more homeopathic,
one might say. The town is equally difficult for an automobile to
make its way through, but as one approaches the water's edge things
somewhat improve. Wampach's Hotel at Folkestone is not bad, but B. B.
B., as the "Automobile Club's Hand Book" puts it (bed, bath, and
breakfast), costs eight shillings and sixpence a day. This is too
much for what you get.

We followed the shore road to Hythe, Dymchurch, New Romney, and Rye,
perhaps thirteen miles all told, along a pebble-strewn roadway with
here and there a glimpse of the shining sea and the smoke from a
passing steamer.

To our right was Romney Marsh, calling up memories of the smuggling
days of old, when pipes of port and bales of tobacco mysteriously
found their way inland without paying import duties.

Rye is by no means a resort; it is simply a dull, sleepy, red-roofed
little seaside town, with, at sunset, a riot of blazing colour
reflected from the limpid pools left by the retreating waters of the
Channel, which now lies five miles away across a mud-flat plain,
although coastwise shipping once came to Rye's very door-step.

The entrance to the town, by an old mediaeval gateway, is easily
enough made by a careful driver, but an abrupt turn near the top of
the slight rise cost us a mud-guard, it having been ripped off by an
unexpected and most dangerous hitching-post. This may be now removed;
it certainly is if the local policeman did his duty and reported our
really atrocious language to the authorities. Of all imbecilic and
unneedful obstructions to traffic, Rye's half-hidden hitching-post is
one of the most notable seen in an automobile tour comprising seven
countries and several hundreds, perhaps thousands, of large and small
towns.

The chief curiosities of Rye are its quaint hilltop church, the town
walls, and the Ypres tower, all quite foreign in motive and aspect
from anything else in England.

Those interested in literary shrines may well bow their heads before
the door of the dignified Georgian house near the church, in which
resides the enigmatic Henry James. There may be other literary lights
who shed a glow over Rye, but we did not learn of them, and surely
none could be more worthy of the attention of literary lion-hunters
than the American who has become "more English" than the English
themselves.

We left Rye