36o 



COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



road ? More celebrated even than the most celebrated 

 of their rivals, it is time that I should make some men- 

 tion of them here : of their appearance when in the 

 flesh, of their characteristics as artists, of their fate. 

 And, to begin with — speaking of coachmen's fate — few I 

 should surmise have met a more ignobly ironical one 

 from a coachman's point of view than did poor Jack 



Courtyard oj the Saracen's Head, Toivcestcr. 



Matthews who drove the Oak and Nettle coaches from 

 Welshpool to Liverpool, which were run in opposition to 

 the Holyhead Mail and were often too fast to be safe. 

 For poor Jack fell no willing victim to his own indiscretion, 

 but was killed — it is with a blush for the departed that I 

 write it — in a railway accident. In a foolish moment 

 he took it into his head to go to Liverpool for a day's 



