The Merry Past 



team that would go, it was as much, or rather more 

 than I expected. ' Hit them as will work,' used to be 

 the proprietor's maxim, ' there's no use in hitting 

 them as won't.' " With such tools provided for his 

 labour, there is little wonder that casualties became 

 so common that they were as second nature to him, 

 and an occasional runaway, in fact, a rather agreeable 

 episode. Of the latter, poor fellow, he had one too 

 many, and most extraordinary was the catastrophe in 

 its relation to himself. When on the Edinborough 

 Mail, a team was given to him that more than once 

 was ominous of some catastrophe before its career 

 was run. At length it came — the horses broke away 

 with him in the neighbourhood of Grantham, beat 

 him at every point, leaving him no move but the 

 hazardous expedient of running them off the road, 

 and bringing up his coach in the ditch. As she went 

 over, he heard, as he described it, a crash as if his head 

 had been riven to atoms. A mere momentary 

 shock it seemed, and to all appearance completely 

 recovered he was enabled to meet and remedy all the 

 consequences of the accident. Soon, however, it 

 became manifest that some mysterious injury had 

 been sustained, for whenever Richardson mounted 

 the box, at the end of a score of miles his sight would 

 gradually fail him, till at last he would grow quite 

 blind, a melancholy state in which the poor man 

 continued. Sailor Jack was a splendidly made man, 

 who bore about him all the signs of robust health and 

 aptness for exertion of any kind, and even after his 

 accident in ordinary life his sight betrayed no symp- 



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