An hour's ride on the velvet cushions of a railway carriage brings us, with our Paultons friends, the Boyce boys, to Southampton, which was an old town when King Canute was young. We take rooms at a pretentious marble hotel with a mansard roof, attached to the station--a railroad hotel, in fact, but strikingly unlike that institution as we know it in America. Wide halls, solid stone staircases, gorgeous coffee-room, black-coated waiters, and the inevitable buxom landlady with a regiment of blooming daughters for assistants--one presiding over the accounts, another officiating at the beer-pumps, a third to answer questions, and all very much under the influence of their back hair and other charms of person. One of them alleviates the monotony of the office duties by working at embroidery in bright worsteds. Strolling out, Bunker and I consult certain shabby worthies who are yawning on the boxes of a long line of wretched hacks drawn up by the sidewalk across the street, and find that we can charter a vehicle for two shillings an hour. These cabbies have more nearly the air of our own noble hackmen than any we have seen in England. Americans are no novelty to them, for ship-loads of American tourists are put off here at frequent intervals, and the cabbies have a thin imitation of the voting hackman's independence. They stop short, however, of his impudence. They are lazy, but they touch their hats occasionally. We choose two of the tumble-down vehicles and go after the ladies. My driver is an elderly man with a hat which has seen better days, and I have chosen his hack, not because it is less likely to drop off its wheels than the others, but because he himself looks like a seedy Bohemian. He proves to be a very intelligent fellow, with a ready turn for description which serves him in good stead whenever his horse gets tired of walking and stops short. At such times our Bohemian pretends that he has stopped the horse himself in order to point out and comment upon some curious thing in the immediate vicinity. It is pleasant driving. The hack is open, and we hoist sun-umbrellas and look about comfortably. Presently the weary horse stops in the middle of the street. "'Ere you are, sir," says Cabby briskly, turning half round on his box and pointing to an old stone structure which stretches quite across the High street. "This 'ere is the old Bar Gate, sir, one of the hancient gates of the town. Part of the horiginal town wall. Was a large ditch 'ere, sir, and another there, and a stone bridge betwixt the two, and the young bucks in them days did use to practice harchery right 'ere where you see the lamp-post. The Guild'all is _hin_ the gate, sir, right hinside it, with a passage hup. I'll drive through the harch, sir, and you'll see the hother side. Cluck!" (to the horse).