An interesting account of the author's tour, includes an adverse report on the standard of food at a local inn (p.123) and a complaint at the cost of being shown around the famous library at Hafod - he refused the offer! (p. 121).

"The plan of this work [is] ... to illustrate the life of Sir John Falstaff exclusively from the most striking passages in his career, as invented by Shakespeare"--Preface

In Unfamiliar England is a book by Thos. D. Murphy. A fascinating travelogue where the author takes the reader on an all-England tour by car, with excursions into Ireland as Scotland as well. Excerpt: "Ipswich, though a city of some seventy thousand people and of considerable activity, is by no means shorn of its old-time interest and picturesqueness. There are many crooked old-world streets where the soft, time-mellowed tones of the gray walls and antique gables are diversified by carved beams, plaster fronts and diamond-paned windows, each of which has its box of brightly colored flowers."

Difference between Gaming and Gambling-Universality and Antiquity of Gambling-Isis and Osiris-Games and Dice of the Egyptians-China and India-The Jews-Among the Greeks and Romans-Among Mahometans-Early Dicing-Dicing in England in the 13th and 14th Centuries-In the 17th Century-Celebrated Gamblers-Bourchier-Swiss Anecdote-Dicing in the 18th Century. Gaming is derived from the Saxon word Gamen, meaning joy, pleasure, sports, or gaming-and is so interpreted by Bailey, in his Dictionary of 1736; whilst Johnson gives Gamble-to play extravagantly for money, and this distinction is to be borne in mind in the perusal of this book; although the older term was in use until the invention of the later-as we see in Cotton's Compleat Gamester (1674), in which he gives the following excellent definition of the word: -"Gaming is an enchanting witchery, gotten between Idleness and Avarice: an itching disease, that makes some scratch the head, whilst others, as if they were bitten by a Tarantula, are laughing themselves to death; or, lastly, it is a paralytical distemper, which, seizing the arm, the man cannot chuse but shake his elbow.