The driver was a garrulous whip. From time to time he had been calling down to Sedgwick the names of famous points of interest along the route, which had been unheeded by the absorbed occupant of the cab. Finally the driver explained that a certain structure was Westminster Abbey.
"It is where kings and queens and great soldiers and scholars are buried," said cabbie.
"Burial lots come high there, do they not?" said Sedgwick.
"Why, man, there are no lots sold there," said cabbie. "It is a place which was hundreds of years ago set aside for England's great dead to be buried in. The brightest dream of an Englishman is to rest there at last."
"Do they dream when they get there?" asked Sedgwick.
"Why, man," said cabbie, "when they get there they are dead."
"The greatest in all England," replied cabbie.
"Do you know of any Englishmen who are in a hurry to be carried there?" said Sedgwick.
"O, no," said cabbie, "the best of them are not in any hurry about it."
"You Englishmen must be a queer race, to be always dreaming of going to a place and still are never anxious to start," said Sedgwick.
Cabbie gave up trying to explain the majesty of the great Abbey to one so utterly obtuse as Sedgwick seemed to be. He drove on in silence for half an hour or forty minutes before he rallied enough to speak again. Then he pointed to a structure and called down to Sedgwick that the place was Newgate.
"What is there peculiar about Newgate?" asked Sedgwick.
"Why, it is the famous Newgate prison," said cabbie.
Sedgwick roused himself and asked, "What do they do in Newgate?"
"What do they do?" said cabbie, "what do they do? Why, they hang people there sometimes."
"Get down, please, and ask them what they will charge to hang me," said Sedgwick. He did not smile; he seemed in sober earnest.
Cabbie looked at him for an instant, then whipped up his horses and hurried him to the hotel. Arriving there, he sprang down and said, "This is your hotel." Sedgwick got out and was walking off mechanically, when cabbie said, "Five shillings, please, sir." Sedgwick, with "O, I had forgotten," handed the man a guinea, and passed into the hotel. Cabbie looked after him, then tapped his forehead as much as to say, "He is off in the upper story," and mounting his box, drove away.