28 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



incurred the king's displeasure." At the very cHmax 

 of this emptiness a sirloin of beef was set before him, 

 when the good Abbot verified the proverb that two 

 hungry meals make a glutton. He in point of fact 

 rivalled the king's performance at Reading, and just as 

 he was wiping his mouth, out jumped the king from a 

 closet. " My Lord," quoth the king, " deposit presently 

 your hundred pounds of gold, or else no going hence all 

 the days of your life. I have been your physician to 

 cure you of your ' queasie stomach,' and here as I deserve 

 I demand my fee for the same." Too replete for repartee 

 the Abbot '' down with his dust," and presently returned 

 to Reading as somewhat lighter in purse so much more 

 merry in heart than when he came thence. I hope that 

 when Henry the Eighth suppressed the monasteries he 

 remembered that the good Abbot had got a renewed 

 digestion and left him something to buy beef with — but 

 it is probable that he didn't. 



This I believe to be the right interpretation of the 

 vision of the two horsemen on the Reading Road ; which 

 I hope will not be considered a digression from my 

 subject, because the travellers are somewhat pale and 

 insubstantial, and ride by us on ghostly old horses 

 instead of in a spick and span fast day coach. Every- 

 thing is a subject in my eyes provided that it has 

 travelled on the road, and if Henry the Eighth and his 

 patient travelled on it some time since, they have at all 

 events brought me to Reading, which is thirty-eight 

 miles seven furlongs from Hyde Park Corner, and a 

 third of the way to ]^ath. 



Reading has a history like many other provincial 

 towns which nobody has read of That is to say the 

 usual number of l^arliaments have been held there at 

 which no particular measures were passed. Queen 

 Elizabeth visited it six times, but seems to have omitted 

 to shoot a stag during her stays : there was a siege or 

 two undertaken in the Civil Wars ; and a Benedictine 

 Abbey turned into a palace — the Abbey of the 



