22 COMMON INCIDENTS. 



ought not to have recovered, until a certain series of symptoms had 

 been made to give way to an active pharmaceutical treatment. 



I descended to the coffee-room, and ordered breakfast; the French 

 surgeon and his brother joined me in the same box. Ere we had 

 well commenced, the General descended, and desired to be of our 

 party he, too, was going to London. It is hardly worth while to 

 offer a long comment on inn breakfasts; ham, salt as the briny deep, 

 the animal who erst owned the limb having uttered his death-rattle 

 in the EMERALD ISLE eggs, whose claims to partial incubation, 

 and subsequent antiquity of location in the larder window, formed 

 only a secondary flaw in their alluring properties, inasmuch as the 

 ambiguous food and puddle-drink of the parents excluded the possi- 

 bility of their laying a fresh egg of these we had plenty, with muf- 

 fins, dead and sodden as the pudding crust consigned to the pupils 

 at the sixty guineas per annum classical seminaries near the metro- 

 polis, the printed cards of which usually close with this delicate allu- 

 sion " *** Each pupil to bring (only) SILVER SPOONS, knives and 

 forks, towels and sheets, &c." Quere Why not add food too, and 

 face the thing out manfully ? 



Time now became an object : the coach was to start at ten o'clock. 

 Having reviewed the economy of my " malles," I quietly awaited 

 the approach of that real English luxury, a well-appointed stage 

 coach. My companions were for going outside ; I had taken my 

 place inside this arrangement inferred a separation of our company, 

 which was not desired on either side. The Frenchman argued the 

 point, still I was inexorable. I gave, in my turn, my own reasons 

 for my obstinacy. Every man who pays his tailor and hatter, has, 

 or ought to have, an affection for his hat and coat. Now, an outside 

 place, though it presents less present outgoing from the pocket, is 

 both too hot and too dusty mark that, for the coat and hat in sum- 

 mer, and, I think, rather too cold to be pleasant in winter, even ab- 

 stracting the chances of rain. The inside is, if you face the horses, 

 cooler in summer ; and, if one glass be put up, certainly warmer in 

 winter. Don't talk to me of great coats. Who, that valued a coat, 

 would ever squeeze that modified horse sheet, a great coat, over it, 

 to distort and horrify the sublime disposal of its nap, and render it 

 little better, at the journey's end, than a savoy-cabbage leaf? What 

 ails an umbrella ? you will say. Heaven forfend ! Have you never 

 travelled outside a coach during a shower, in due propinquity to an 

 old woman weilding an umbrella, whose area befitted it for the " pa- 

 rachute" of an aeronaut ? Have you not seen the interesting rills, 

 which each conducting whalebone makes its own, to lavish between 

 the coat collar and neck-cloth of its defenceless victims ? Have you not 

 felt those brass-sheathed portion of the anatomy of the mammiferous 

 leviathan, now closing your vision, as with an extinguisher, by thump- 

 ing your hat over your eyes now, by a change of posture in the in- 

 flictor's arm, nearly scooping it off your head and, at every instant, 

 rub, rub, rubbing against the delicate salient angles of your hat, re- 

 ducing those points to a mere felt, convulsing you with agony and 

 cold sweat, as each rub speaks beaver ! beaver ! to your sinking 

 soul ? If you have not noted these trials, all I can say is, that you are 



