302 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



the whip ; his personal equipment, not that of a dandy, 

 but modest, respectable, in confirmed good taste." 



Well this it seems to me is the description of an 

 artist's salient traits — the sort of critical effort which 

 \vc expend now on young actors who bound upon the 

 stage without experience ; on authors who write African 

 romances without having read their Dumas ! And I 

 could quote twenty more examples of a coachman's 

 fine points as carefully considered, had I the space to 

 do so or the inclination. Cartwright's great rival, to 

 take one instance, has been as carefully weighed in as 

 crucial a balance and not found wanting. He drove 

 the Edinburgh Mail from Stamford to Doncaster, about 

 seventy-five miles. Not so polished a man as Cart- 

 wright quite ; but of his method — quietness itself. 

 Under his urbane direction, no hurry, no distress, no 

 whipping, the pace ten miles an hour, including stop- 

 pages, seemed nothing to do. And a team of four bay 

 blood mares did this nothing from Barnby Moor to 

 Rossiter Bridge in exceptionally gratifying style. 



Peter Pry in this neighbourhood, or, to speak more 

 accurately, in the neighbourhood of Sutton, was witness 

 of a local custom from Leech's box-seat which filled him 

 with an ingenuous surprise. This was the annual offering 

 of extremely indigestible first-fruits to guards and coach- 

 men, not excluding passengers, by the honest-hearted 

 farmers and cottagers of the roadside. 



When I say that upon a tray covered with a beautiful 

 damask napkin, plum cakes, tartlets, gingerbread, ex- 

 quisite home-made bread, and biscuits, profusely appeared, 

 my readers may understand what sort of a digestion was 

 needed to cope with them on a May morning after sundry 

 rums and milks. The deadly list however is not concluded, 

 ales, currant and gooseberry wines, rounded the homicidal 

 whole ; ales and currant wines only more instantaneously 

 fatal from the pleasing appearance which they pre- 

 sented in old-fashioned glass jugs embossed with jocund 

 figures. 



