How Kelvedon can ever have escaped being called "Long" Kelvedon is a mystery, for it straggles on and on and must be nearly a mile in length; a street of handsome old residences, of cottages and humble shops of all ages, and old broken-backed taverns where the Essex labourer gathers night by night and discusses the prospect of the carraway crop and the likelihood of the entire agricultural interest presently, going _en masse_ to the "work'us." After which, with the courage of despair, and to drown his troubles, he will call for "another pot o' thrup'ny, missus," and, when closing time comes, slouch home through the mud and mist until the following evening, when the same programme is repeated. It is the agricultural labourer who supports the little wayside "publics" whose existence in such numbers puzzles the mid-day stranger, who, seeing them empty and apparently lifeless, wonders how they can possibly live. Business practically only begins when work in the fields is done, and the rent is not so high but that a few pots of beer a night represent a sufficient profit. It must not be supposed that Kelvedon has not its exquisite architectural relics of a bygone time, or that its inns are all of the rural beer-house type. Not at all. Chief among the inns of Kelvedon is the "Angel," which indeed is a house not only of considerable size and outstanding character, but of historic interest, as having been the favourite resting-place of William the Third on his journeys along this road. Its projecting porch is the first thing the traveller sees on entering the town from the direction of London, where the road swerves violently to the left, and again as violently to the right, forming a very awkward corner. "Angel Corner," said Alexander, of the "Retaliator" coach, "is the very devil of a corner." This remark was drawn from him on the occasion of his nearly driving into the porch, when trying conclusions with a rival charioteer. Almost opposite the still-existing "Angel" stood the equally extensive "Red Lion," long since retired from business and remodelled as a row of cottages. The histories of both houses, and of many another fine old inn, which might once have been written from the recollections of those who knew the old days of the road, are now in great part lost, and the world so much the poorer. Had scribblers then abounded, and the "personal" note of the modern journalist been sounded in those days, we should have known how King William came to and set out from his inn; how he looked, what he ate and drank, how many long clay pipes he smoked, and what comparisons he drew in conversation with Bentinck between the flat lands on the way from Kelvedon to Harwich and the still flatter lands of his native Holland. And besides such records of the great, we should then have been better furnished with the early history of coaching, which, if not indeed a sealed book, is at least a very short and fragmentary one. [Illustration: THE "ANGEL," KELVEDON.]