Now we are in a long and featureless street, with semi-detached houses on either hand, and a malodorous cab-stand and a four-faced clock. "Which way for Rosebank?" shouts the Gondolier. "The first to your left and then turn sharp to the right," bellows a responsive policeman. We follow the direction given, and suddenly we are there--not at Rosebank, but quite out of even Greater London. The street ends abruptly. Trams and trains and gas and shops are left behind, and all at once we are in the country. The road is lined with hedgerows, dusty indeed, but still alive. Elms of respectable dimensions look down upon big fields, with here and there an oak, and cows resting under it. At one turn of the road there is a recognizable odour of late-cut hay, and in the middle distance I distinctly perceive a turnip-field, out of which a covey of partridges might rise without surprising any one. We pull up and gaze around. Look where I will, I cannot see a house, nor even a cottage. Surely my friends have not played a practical joke on me and asked me to spend a day in an imaginary Paradise. The Gondolier looks at his perspiring horse, and mops his own brow, and gazes contemptuously on the landscape. "I should call this the world's end if I was arst," he says. "Blow'd if they've even got a Public 'Ouse." Suddenly the sound of a shrill bell bursts on the ear. The Gondolier, who is a humorist, says "Muffins." I jump out of the gondola, and pursue the welcome tinkle round a sharp angle in the road. There I see, perched on the brow of a sandy knoll, a small tin building, which a belfry and a cross proclaim to be a church. Inside I discover the Oldest Inhabitant pulling the muffin-bell with cheerful assiduity. He is more than ready to talk, and his whole discourse is as countrified as if he lived a hundred miles from Charing Cross. "Yes, this is a main lonely place. There ain't many people lives about 'ere. Why, ten years ago it was all fields. Now there are some houses--not many. He lives in one himself. How far off? Well, a matter of a mile or so. He was born on the Squire's land; his father worked on the farm. Yes, he's lived here all his life. Remembers it before there was a Crystal Palace, and when there was no railways or nothing. He hasn't often been in the train, and has only been up to London two or three times. Who goes to the church? Well--not many, except the Squire's family and the school-children. Why was it built? Oh, the Squire wants to get some rich folks to live round about. He's ready to part with his land for building; and there's going to be a row of houses built just in front of the church. He reckons the people will be more likely to come now that there's a church for them to go to." And now the "ten-minutes" bell begins with livelier measure; the Oldest Inhabitant shows me to a seat; and, on the stroke of eleven, a shrill "Amen" is heard in the vestry, and there enters a modest procession of