The Widest Street in Surrey.--A lucky find.--Barbara Villiers.--Pepys at the Wells.--Nell Gwynne.--Aldermen and lazy ladies.--Epsom's fall.--A knavish apothecary.--Baron Swasso, his house.--Miss Wallin, bone-setter; bone-setter, Mrs. Mapp.--Epsom re-made at the table.--Eclipse.--The Road to the Derby.--The Ring round the Gibbet.--Catherine-wheels, Motor-cars, Kites, Pills.--Lord Rosebery.--Lord Lyttelton's ghost. Epsom is the centre of the country between the great railway lines. It has its own railway, but it is midway between the lines that run express trains to Brighton and Southampton: Epsom's own expresses only run for two weeks in the year, when the races come round. For the other fifty weeks Epsom is a quiet town of villas, once a village, now nearly a suburb like Esher or Weybridge. Lord Rosebery sometimes lives near the town, at Durdans, and deplores the large numbers of lunatics who are brought to live near the town always. But Epsom is only occasionally ruffled by the lunatics, and has developed a dangerously good train service. Epsom has the widest and breeziest main street of any Surrey town, and you do not guess the reason until you read the history of the town pretty closely. The story of Epsom, until the two great races that belong to its downs were founded over Lord Derby's wine, is the story of its wells. Before Epsom Salts there was hardly an Epsom to give them a name. There may have been a tiny village where the church stands, but that would be all; the rector preached to a few cottagers. Then, one hot summer day in 1618, the lucky thing happened. Henry Wicker, trying to water his cattle on the common, found a small hole with a spring in it; he enlarged it, and took the cattle to the water, but could not make them drink. Then the doctors were told about it. They used it first, as Pownall the local historian tells you, "as a vulnerary and abstersive," and healed wounds with it; then some labourers accidentally drank it, and Epsom's fortune was made. The doctors agreed; Epsom salts were bitter, diluent, absorbent, soluble, cathartic--everything that salts should be. In two years the wells were enclosed with a wall; in twenty years France and Germany had heard of Epsom, and distinguished foreigners obediently paced the common. But the great days were still to come. As yet few buildings had grown up close to the Wells, merely "a shed to shelter the sickly visitors." Then came the year 1670, when Charles II gave Barbara Villiers his palace of Nonsuch two miles away. She, as careless of a king's gift and as avaricious as a king's mistress should be, turned the palace into cash, and out of its demolished walls the local builder piled up houses by Epsom Wells.