The fact that a traveller, after a long tramp or ride through thinly populated country, may find no dinner at a village inn is the direct result of a law passed by the Catholic Kings, Ferdinand and Isabella, long before the days of Queen Elizabeth. Inasmuch as the innkeepers were thieves and robbers a Royal decree enacted that they should provide service only. It is to be feared that modern travellers are not more grateful than was Don Quixote, and especially Sancho, for this paternal protection of their purse at the expense of their person, by which they are occasionally at risk of faring as ill as the ingenious gentleman and his squire who "breakfasted, lunched, dined, and supped at one and the same moment."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.