Washington Irving thought as highly of inns as did Dr. Johnson. “To a homeless man, who has no spot on this wide world which he can truly call his own,” he says, in a memorable passage, “there is a momentary feeling of something like independence and territorial consequence when, after a weary day’s travel, he kicks off his boots, thrusts his feet into slippers, and stretches himself before an inn fire. Let the world without go as it may; let kingdoms rise or fall, so long as he has the wherewithal to pay his bill, he is, for the time being, the very monarch of all he surveys. The armchair is his throne, the poker his sceptre, and the little parlour, some twelve feet square, his undisputed empire. It is a morsel of certainty, snatched from the midst of the uncertainties of life; it is a sunny moment gleaming out kindly on a cloudy day; and he who has advanced some way on the pilgrimage of existence knows the importance of husbanding even morsels and moments of enjoyment. ‘Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?’ thought I, as I gave the fire a stir, lolled back in my elbow-chair, and cast a complacent look about the little parlour of the ‘Red Horse,’ at Stratford-on-Avon.” He was very speedily answered, No! for at that instant the chimes preluded the stroke of midnight, and at the same time “a gentle tap came at the door, and a pretty chambermaid, putting in her smiling face, inquired, with a hesitating air,” whether that momentary monarch of all he surveyed had rung. Of course she knew perfectly well he had not rung, and the humbled autocrat of those twelve square feet was quite correct when he “understood it as a modest hint that it was time to retire.” The Emperor of the Inn Parlour accordingly abdicated immediately, lest a worse thing--_i.e._, the possible turning off the gas at the meter--should befall; and, his dream of absolute dominion at an end, went off to bed, like a good boy, rather than the Crowned Head he had fancied himself. [Illustration: WASHINGTON IRVING’S “THRONE” AND “SCEPTRE.”]