The Seven Poor Travellers
CHAPTER I -- IN THE OLD CITY OF ROCHESTER
Strictly speaking, there were only six Poor Travellers; but, being a Traveller myself,
though an idle one, and being withal as poor as I hope to be, I brought the number up to
seven. This word of explanation is due at once, for what says the inscription over the
quaint old door?
RICHARD WATTS, Esq.
by his Will, dated 22 Aug. 1579,
founded this Charity
for Six poor Travellers,
who not being ROGUES, or PROCTORS,
May receive gratis for one Night,
Lodging, Entertainment,
and Fourpence each.
It was in the ancient little city of Rochester in Kent, of all the good days in the year upon
a Christmas-eve, that I stood reading this inscription over the quaint old door in question.
I had been wandering about the neighbouring Cathedral, and had seen the tomb of
Richard Watts, with the effigy of worthy Master Richard starting out of it like a ship's
figure-head; and I had felt that I could do no less, as I gave the Verger his fee, than
inquire the way to Watts's Charity. The way being very short and very plain, I had come
prosperously to the inscription and the quaint old door.
"Now," said I to myself, as I looked at the knocker, "I know I am not a Proctor; I wonder
whether I am a Rogue!"
Upon the whole, though Conscience reproduced two or three pretty faces which might
have had smaller attraction for a moral Goliath than they had had for me, who am but a
Tom Thumb in that way, I came to the conclusion that I was not a Rogue. So, beginning
to regard the establishment as in some sort my property, bequeathed to me and divers co-
legatees, share and share alike, by the Worshipful Master Richard Watts, I stepped
backward into the road to survey my inheritance.
I found it to be a clean white house, of a staid and venerable air, with the quaint old door
already three times mentioned (an arched door), choice little long low lattice-windows,
and a roof of three gables. The silent High Street of Rochester is full of gables, with old
beams and timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly garnished with a queer old clock
that projects over the pavement out of a grave red-brick building, as if Time carried on
business there, and hung out his sign. Sooth to say, he did an active stroke of work in
Rochester, in the old days of the Romans, and the Saxons, and the Normans; and down to
the times of King John, when the rugged castle--I will not undertake to say how many
