The Project Gutenberg EBook of Little Travels and Roadside Sketches, by
William Makepeace Thackeray

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Title: Little Travels and Roadside Sketches

Author: William Makepeace Thackeray

Release Date: May 27, 2006 [EBook #2843]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITTLE TRAVELS ***

Produced by Donald Lainson

LITTLE TRAVELS AND ROADSIDE SKETCHES

By William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA Titmarsh)

I. FROM RICHMOND IN SURREY TO BRUSSELS IN BELGIUM

II. GHENT--BRUGES:--

Ghent (1840)

Bruges

III. WATERLOO

LITTLE TRAVELS AND ROADSIDE SKETCHES

I.--FROM RICHMOND IN SURREY TO BRUSSELS IN BELGIUM

. . . I quitted the "Rose Cottage Hotel" at Richmond, one of the
comfortablest, quietest, cheapest, neatest little inns in England, and
a thousand times preferable, in my opinion, to the "Star and Garter,"
whither, if you go alone, a sneering waiter, with his hair curled,
frightens you off the premises; and where, if you are bold enough to
brave the sneering waiter, you have to pay ten shillings for a bottle
of claret; and whence, if you look out of the window, you gaze on a view
which is so rich that it seems to knock you down with its splendor--a
view that has its hair curled like the swaggering waiter: I say, I
quitted the "Rose Cottage Hotel" with deep regret, believing that I
should see nothing so pleasant as its gardens, and its veal cutlets, and
its dear little bowling-green, elsewhere. But the time comes when people
must go out of town, and so I got on the top of the omnibus, and the
carpet-bag was put inside.

If I were a great prince and rode outside of coaches (as I should if I
were a great prince), I would, whether I smoked or not, have a case of
the best Havanas in my pocket--not for my own smoking, but to give them
to the snobs on the coach, who smoke the vilest cheroots. They poison
the air with the odor of their filthy weeds. A man at all easy in his
circumstances would spare himself much annoyance by taking the above
simple precaution.

A gentleman sitting behind me tapped me on the back and asked for a
light. He was a footman, or rather valet. He had no