On entering the Abbey you run the gauntlet of a dozen or more fellows who have the privilege of selling guide-books. They will not take "No!" for an answer, but manage somehow to compel the gratuity. They are Potiphar's wives with designs upon your pockets, and you have to choose between yielding to them, like Joseph, or leaving some portion of your garments in their grasp. You always shed the sixpence. Then you wander about through the magnificent structure, reading tablets on which are inscribed the virtues of all sorts of men, till happily remembering that kings and queens were buried in the building, you ask whereabouts they may be lying. Some one gives the information, the party is made up, and you place yourself under the charge of what they call a verger, a beery old fellow, with a face that blazes like a comet, with some sort of a black gown over his shoulders, who conducts you to the gate of a chapel, at which stands another beery old fellow, with a like face and a similar gown on his shoulders, who deliberately asks you for sixpence apiece, which being paid, you pass in, very like you would in a circus. Then the beery old fellow commences in a sing-song, monotonous way, his descriptions:-- "The first on the left is the tomb of Queen Eleanor, who died in the year of our Lord," and so on. He intones his service just about as those officiating in the other services do, only he goes on without making a stop or punctuating a sentence. He guides you from one room to another without the slightest pause, and when he gets through he and the one at the gate, who takes the money, go out and drink beer till another party is formed. But it is a very cheap show, and I am under obligations to the Church of England for the delight. In fact, it is a big shilling's worth--for a drinking man. One blast from the fiery orifice in the volcanic face of the verger is enough to save anybody sixpence in beer, and as for the book, why you have it, and it is worth the money. Thus, you see, you have the show of the building and the dead Kings thrown in. I was not sure that we should not have given the Dean a shilling or two, and I felt like offering it to him, but, unfortunately, I was out of silver. It is not the magnificence and grandeur of the structure, or its sacredness as a place of religious worship, that give Westminster Abbey its interest to the average tourist. It is the burial place of the great dead of England, and its walls contain the dust of more great men than any building in the world.