64 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



days as this, in looking up and down the silent coach 

 road — that great artery which once gave Shepherd's 

 Shore life, and which is now as empty as the heart which 

 it fed — that we get some sense of the poetry of the old 

 coaching days, some perception of the gulf which sepa- 

 rates our manners and our methods from theirs ; the 

 difference, indeed, which lies between travelling to a 

 place with such due pauses for romance and adventure 

 as were provided in the old days of posting and flying 

 machines, and arriving at a place with no pauses at all 

 save for collecting tickets — which are not always to be 

 found — as are provided for by our limited mails and fly- 

 ing Dutchmen. For it was this very deliberation of our 

 ancestors which has given to such inns as this Shepherd's 

 Shore on the great roads, much of their historic charm 

 — a deliberation which permitted these old houses to 

 catch, if I may say so, something of the personality of the 

 great people, whether kings, queens, highwaymen, con- 

 spirators, or coachmen, who halted at their hospitable 

 doors, dined at their liberal tables, or passed by them at 

 that decorous speed of from five to nine miles an hour, 

 which, even without a stoppage, permitted however faintly 

 some sort of individual impression. And what sort of 

 individual impression, may I ask, can a distinguished 

 traveller to Bath in these days — whether statesman, on 

 his way to the waters, or modern highwayman, armed 

 with the three-card-trick (we live in degenerate days!), 

 or conspirator, fresh from Parliament — make, let us say 

 on Reading, whose platform he can only just see as he 

 whizzes by it ; or on Swindon, in whose refreshment-room 

 he has five minutes in which to bolt hot soup ? Why, he 

 makes no impression at all, and his characterless transit 

 from one spot to the other (to call it a journey might 

 raise the indignant ghost of some great departed coach- 

 man) will remain ignored and unrecorded for ever. 



Yes ! Railway days and Railway ways, or rather the 

 romance of them will not be written even when posterity 

 has taken to balloons, for the hurry of the concern is 



