Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 February 1910 — UNCANNY GUIDES. [ARTICLE]

UNCANNY GUIDES.

When the Gallows Was Used as' a Landmark in England, The old-time guidebooks in England were by no means cheerful reading; A journey from London to East Grinstead, a distance of five or six and twenty .miles, would have taken the horseman past three gibbets, and it was just as likely as not that from one or the other of them a body would be swinging in the wind. Up till the beginning of the nineteenth century the gallows was almost as frequent a. landmark as finger posts or public houses hate become now. The traveler approaching York is directed by the guidebooks to "turn round by the gallows and three windmills, and the road out of Durham Is “between the gallows and Crokehill.” Going out of Wells you “cross the brook and pass by the gallows.” Any number of such directions can be gleaned from the old books for the guidance of travelers a hundred years ago, and as these Interesting objects were put up and the dead bodies of malefactors left upon them for the special edification of footpads and highwaymen there was a suggestiveness about them that must -have given a special piquancy to cycle touring if it had been in vogue at that time.— London News.