For the purposes of this chapter we will sleep, if it please you, and take our meals occasionally, at the Globe Hotel, standing in the south-west corner of the spacious square at King's Lynn, where, in fact, I have often stayed for many days together. That is why the "Globe" is recommended, not with any extremity of warmth, but just as an ordinary and rather old-fashioned hotel, such as one may expect to find--sometimes the expectation is vain--in a really old-fashioned town like Lynn. It is no sumptuous palace, but it provides plain and wholesome food, fair liquor, and clean bedrooms at about the normal English price. That is much too high, of course, judged by the Continental standard, and some day one may hope that the mysterious reason why English hotel-keepers, having to pay less than the generality of their contemporaries abroad for that raw material of dinners, of which they too often forget to change the original condition, charge more highly for the results and certainly, to all appearance, do not thrive so consistently. They would answer, most likely, that the hotel-keepers of provincial France and of parts of Switzerland can afford to charge their very modest prices because they can safely rely on a regular influx of travellers, principally English, German, and American. "I can never tell," says Boniface, "how many will want dinner on any day. Whether five come or fifty, all expect dinner; I must always be prepared for them"--very often he is sadly unprepared--"and my prices do not do much more than cover my expenses. Many a beautiful joint have I provided, for I never buy anything but the very best, that has had to be thrown away." Quote to him hotels abroad, such as we all know, where guests are taken in _en pension_, and fed fairly well, at from six to nine francs a day, or put it at 5s. to 7s. 6d. to simplify matters, and, while it is plain that he does not really believe you, he will bring up again the same old argument. Nor can you persuade him that a large part of the annual exodus to the Continent is due to knowledge that touring in England is, so far as food and accommodation go, so very dear, and often so remarkably nasty by comparison with touring on the Continent that men are driven abroad. Individually, however, Boniface is in rather a difficult position. Our beautiful islands, for they are very lovely in many kinds of loveliness, and our roads (which, if not equal to those of France, seem to an American to have attained an almost ideal perfection) will never attract their due share of voluntary travellers until the general average of hotels shall be improved, and the general average of charges shall be reduced. Even then some years must elapse before the reform would be realized as well as known, and the set habits of the travelling public, the public which travels of its own free-will and for its own pleasure, might be slow to change. They also, like the hotel-keepers, are English men and English