“That’s very nice of you. I’d like to have you,” and out we went, paying our bills and looking into a misty night. The moon was up but there was a fairly heavy fog and Marlowe looked sheeted and gray. Because I stated I had not been in any of the public houses and was interested to go, he volunteered to accompany me, though I could see that this was against his principles. “I don’t drink myself,” he observed, “but I will go in with you if you want to. Here’s one.” We entered and found a rather dimly lighted room,--gas with a mantle over it,--set with small tables and chairs, and a short bar in one corner. Mrs. Davidge’s bar had been short, too, only her room was dingier and small. A middle-sized Englishman, rather stout, came out of a rear door, opening from behind the bar, and asked us what we would have. My friend asked for root beer. I noticed the unescapable open fire and the array of pink and green and blue wine glasses. Also the machinery for extracting beer and ale from kegs, a most brassy and glowing sight. Our host sold cigars and there were boards about on the tables for some simple games. This and a half-dozen other places into which we ventured gave me the true spirit of Marlowe’s common life. I recalled at once the vast difference between this and the average American small town saloon. In the latter (Heaven preserve us from it) the trade might be greater or it might not, but the room would be larger, the bar larger, the flies, dirt, odor, abominable. I hope I am not traducing a worthy class, but the American saloon keeper of small town proclivities has always had a kind of horror for me. The implements of his trade have always been so scummy and ill-kept. The American place would be apt to be gayer, rougher, noisier. I am thinking of places in towns of the same size. Our host was no more like an American barkeeper than a bee is like a hornet. He was a peaceful-looking man, homely, family marked, decidedly dull. Your American country barkeeper is another sort, more intelligent, perhaps, but less civil, less sensible and reliable looking. The two places were miles apart in quality and feeling. Here in Marlowe and elsewhere in England, wherever I had occasion to inspect them, the public houses of the small-town type were a great improvement over the American variety. They were clean and homelike and cheerful. The array of brass, the fire, the small tables for games, all pleased me. I took it to be a place more used as a country club or meeting-house than as in our case a grimy, orgiastic resort. If there were drunken men or women in any of the “pubs,” this night I did not see them. My Scotch friend assured me that he believed them, ordinarily, to be fairly respectable.