For nature passes the dishes far more rapidly than we can help ourselves.
Or perhaps, thought I, eagerly speculating, this may be only some cunning advertiser with rest for sale (in these days even rest has its price), thus piquing the curiosity of the traveller for the disclosure which he will make a mile or so farther on.

Or else some humourist wasting his wit upon the Fraternity of the Road, too willing (like me, perhaps) to accept his ironical advice.

But it would be well worth while should I find him, to see him chuckle behind his hand.
So I sat there very much interested, for a long time, even framing a rather amusing picture in my own mind of the sort of person who painted these signs, deciding finally that he must be a zealot rather than a trader or humourist.

(Confidentially, I could not make a picture of him in which he was not endowed with plentiful long hair).

As I walked onward again, I decided that in any guise I should like to see him, and I enjoyed thinking what I should say if I met him.