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BELL HOTEL, GLOUCESTER

We came to this queer old English town, not because it is any better
than so many other towns, but because Mr. Poplington told us it was a
good place for our headquarters while we was seeing the River Wye and
other things in the neighborhood. This hotel is the best in the town
and very well kept, so that Jone made his usual remark about its being
a good place to stay in. We are near the point where the four principal
streets of the town, called Northgate, Eastgate, Southgate, and
Westgate, meet, and if there was nothing else to see it would be worth
while to stand there and look at so much Englishism coming and going
from four different quarters.

There is another hotel here, called the New Inn, that was recommended
to us, but I thought we would not want to go there, for we came to see
old England, and I don't want to see its new and shiny things, so we
came to the Bell, as being more antique. But I have since found out
that the New Inn was built in 1450 to accommodate the pilgrims who came
to pay their respects to the tomb of Edward II. in the fine old
cathedral here. But though I should like to live in a four-hundred-and
forty-year-old house, we are very well satisfied where we are.

Two very good things come from Gloucester, for it is the well-spring of
Sunday schools and vaccination. They keep here the horns of the cow
that Dr. Jenner first vaccinated from, and not far from our hotel is
the house of Robert Raikes. This is an old-fashioned timber house, and
looks like a man wearing his skeleton outside of his skin. We are sorry
Mr. Poplington couldn't come here with us, for he could have shown us a
great many things; but he stayed at Chedcombe to finish his fishing,
and he said he might meet us at Buxton, where he goes every year for
his arm.

To see the River Wye you must go down it, so with just one handbag we
took the train for the little town of Ross, which is near the beginning
of the navigable part of the river--I might almost say the wadeable
part, for I imagine the deepest soundings about Ross are not more than
half a yard. We stayed all night at a hotel overlooking the valley of
the little river, and as the best way to see this wonderful stream is
to go down it in a rowboat, as soon as we reached Ross we engaged a
boat and a man for the next morning to take us to Monmouth, which would
be about a day's row, and give us the best part of the river. But I
must say tha