Quite a small thing will turn a lady traveller against a wayside inn. Those horrible, narrow swing doors, which are only too common, are quite enough to make a woman decide against the inn which is so unfortunate as to have them barring the only entrance. No man ever pushed through such doors with dignity, and a woman feels instinctively that to struggle with them involves almost a loss of self-respect. A woman likes to _enter_ a house. She does not like to slip in furtively, and she feels, perhaps unconsciously, that there is a hint of the surreptitious in these doors in the way they open just wide enough on pressure and close again immediately as if to hide a misdemeanour. No woman, either, will stand and drink even the mildest of non-alcoholic liquors if she can possibly help it. She prefers to sit down. The ordinary bar, therefore, has no attractions for her. Even in a railway refreshment room, where hurry excuses most things, a woman will only stand under compulsion. It is not that she really wants to sit down through weariness, for she may have been sitting for hours in a railway carriage. But she has an instinct for propriety and conduct. If tea shops, which are so largely patronized by women, had a high bar like public-houses, with as little sitting accommodation, as is often to be found in licensed establishments, they could not possibly keep open. Why it should be customary to stand up to drink a glass of beer and sit down to take a cup of tea is a mystery. Let us admit and welcome the efforts of the old Georgian coaching inns to keep abreast of the times. Let us cheerfully accept the attempts of mine host to put life into an old musty coffee-room and bar parlour. Conservatism is not without value at the inn with a history, and the landlord for his own sake must step warily. Let no iconoclast interfere too violently with the worm-eaten glories of old oak and mahogany or seek to disparage the solid virtues of the great round of beef, or the appetising ingredients of the game pie. Tradition in such things is well worth preserving.