“Why, what does that mean, sir!” Kit exclaimed. “That can’t be the man I have been reading about!”
“It is the very man,” the Captain declared. “This restaurant is so old that it was here in his day, and it was his favorite eating-place. And that exact seat where you are sitting was his favorite place, where he sat every day to eat his dinner while he talked with many of the famous men you read of in the book. You see you are on the track of famous people to-day.”
“I feel as if I were a sort of character in a book,” Kit replied, “instead of a real American eating chops and baked potatoes; such chops, too! this is a great country for chops, but I don’t think much of their oysters. I tried some a few days ago, and they tasted soapy, as if they had been raised in a wash-tub. Then when I went into a drug store to look at a directory they charged me a penny for the privilege. Think of paying two cents to look at a directory! But those are small matters. It is an event in a fellow’s life to be sitting where the great Dr. Johnson used to sit, and to see the grave of such a man as Oliver Goldsmith. I can hardly realize it.”
“Oh, we will associate with some more noted people before we stop,” the Captain replied. “If you both feel like it, we will take a hansom down to Westminster Abbey when we finish here, where you can see the tombs of more celebrated Englishmen than you have ever heard of. It is a good place for a young man to go, for he naturally begins to inquire about the great people who are buried there, and to read about them.”
When the lunch was concluded and they were about to go, Mr. Watkins made a remark. It was something that he had been thinking about half through the meal; for it was intended to be a joke, and an Englishman approaches a joke as cautiously as a good driver nearing a railway crossing.
“I suppose there will be a new plate on the wall next time you come here, Mr. Silburn,” he said.
“Why so?” Kit asked.
“Well,” said Watkins, “you see that plate says, ‘The seat of Dr. Samuel Johnson.’ Now they will have another one under it, I have no doubt, adding, ‘Also of Mr. Supercargo Silburn.’”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt of it,” Kit replied. “I ought to laugh at the joke, but I really cawn’t, don’t you know, after that big chop and potato.” He tried to imitate the English manner of speaking; but if that was another joke, it was all lost on Mr. Watkins.
The three crowded into a hansom and were soon set down in front of Westminster Abbey, and for the next hour Kit had eyes for nothing but the long rows of tombs. The architecture might have surprised him under other circumstances, but no architecture was as interesting to him as the burial-place of so many famous people he had heard of. The tomb of David Livingstone was one of the first that caught his eye. Then he found Sir Isaac Newton’s, and those of Browning and Tennyson side by side, and Shakespeare, Dr. Johnson, Lord Macaulay, a bust of Longfellow, and scores, hundreds of others whose names he had at least heard.