the train is a trifle delayed, they do not take the extra time to unload luggage, but avail themselves of this convenient arrangement to add to the pleasures of travel in a land without baggage checks.

CHAPTER X

B

66

DAYS IN THE NORTH

OSTON is an old town full of fascination, and St. Botolph's tower, the "Boston Stump," is all that could be desired. The founding of Boston was on this wise. In a certain noble Saxon family there were two sons, Botolf and Adolf, meaning Ruling Wolf" and "Noble Wolf." They became Christians in the seventh century. Adolf became an abbot in Utrecht, where both boys had been sent to study, but Botolf returned to East Anglia, and requested the king to grant him some tract of land where he might start Christian worship and try to influence others to join him. The site which now is Boston was given to him. Here, in a little "wattle and daub" church, he started a brotherhood, a genuine Simple Life cult; there were no surrounding towns where anything could be bought, so that everything that they used had to be produced by the brethren themselves. They had to gather their wood, raise all their

own food, animal and vegetable, and, in addition to managing every department of daily life, these enthusiasts held seven services a day.

They were burned out by the Danes in 870, but they escaped to Thorney and to Ely, and the Christian work was not again carried out consistently in Boston until after the Norman Conquest, when a stone church was built, from which, in time, the parish of St. Botolph was evolved.

In a description of Boston by Mr. J. Martin, in his story" May Fair," he speaks of some individual features about the medieval town. "The now spacious market place," he says, 66 was then covered with narrow streets with low houses. . . at the corner of every street stood a wooden crucifix or saint, to call forth the devotional feelings of the passers-by, which displayed themselves by a momentary genuflexion. . . . On particular occasions, such as feasts or fasts, every poor person felt it a point of conscience to present his favourite saint or patron with the end of a candle, so that the rudely carved representative of the holy man might at those times be seen with twenty or thirty candles burning before it at noonday." He tells of a " big stone figure of St. Botolf," which stood over the guard house door.