I am an innkeeper, and know my grounds,

And study them; Brain o' man, I study them.

I must have jovial guests to drive my ploughs,

And whistling boys to bring my harvests home,

Or I shall hear no flails thwack. -- THE NEW INN.

It is the privilege of tale-tellers to open their story in an inn, the

free rendezvous of all travellers, and where the humour of each displays

itself without ceremony or restraint. This is specially suitable when

the scene is laid during the old days of merry England, when the

guests were in some sort not merely the inmates, but the messmates

and temporary companions of mine Host, who was usually a personage of

privileged freedom, comely presence, and good-humour. Patronized by him

the characters of the company were placed in ready contrast; and they

seldom failed, during the emptying of a six-hooped pot, to throw off

reserve, and present themselves to each other, and to their landlord,

with the freedom of old acquaintance.

The village of Cumnor, within three or four miles of Oxford, boasted,

during the eighteenth of Queen Elizabeth, an excellent inn of the old

stamp, conducted, or rather ruled, by Giles Gosling, a man of a goodly

person, and of somewhat round belly; fifty years of age and upwards,

moderate in his reckonings, prompt in his payments, having a cellar of

sound liquor, a ready wit, and a pretty daughter. Since the days of

old Harry Baillie of the Tabard in Southwark, no one had excelled Giles

Gosling in the power of pleasing his guests of every description; and so

great was his fame, that to have been in Cumnor without wetting a cup

at the bonny Black Bear, would have been to avouch one's-self utterly

indifferent to reputation as a traveller. A country fellow might as well

return from London without looking in the face of majesty. The men of

Cumnor were proud of their Host, and their Host was proud of his house,

his liquor, his daughter, and himself.

It was in the courtyard of the inn which called this honest fellow

landlord, that a traveller alighted in the close of the evening, gave

his horse, which seemed to have made a long journey, to the hostler,

and made some inquiry, which produced the following dialogue betwixt the

myrmidons of the bonny Black Bear.

"What, ho! John Tapster."

"At hand, Will Hostler," replied the man of the spigot, showing himself

in his costume of loose jacket, linen breeches, and green apron, half

within and half without a door, which appeared to descend to an outer

cellar.




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