Chapter 1
n the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping
Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London—
measuring from the Standard in Cornhill, or rather from the
spot on or near to which the Standard used to be in days of yore—
a house of public entertainment called the Maypole; which fact
was demonstrated to all such travellers as could neither read nor
write (and at that time a vast number both of travellers and stayat-
homes were in this condition) by the emblem reared on the
roadside over against the house, which, if not of those goodly
proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times,
was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any
arrow that ever English yeoman drew.
The Maypole—by which term from henceforth is meant the
house, and not its sign—the Maypole was an old building, with
more gable ends than a lazy man would care to count on a sunny
day; huge zig-zag chimneys, out of which it seemed as though even
smoke could not choose but come in more than naturally fantastic
shapes, imparted to it in its tortuous progress; and vast stables,
gloomy, ruinous, and empty. The place was said to have been built
in the days of King Henry the Eighth; and there was a legend, not
only that Queen Elizabeth had slept there one night while upon a
hunting excursion, to wit, in a certain oak-panelled room with a
deep bay window, but that next morning, while standing on a
mounting block before the door with one foot in the stirrup, the
virgin monarch had then and there boxed and cuffed an unlucky
page for some neglect of duty. The matter-of-fact and doubtful
folks, of whom there were a few among the Maypole customers,