90 COAOHING. 



The rapidity with which travellers are now 

 conveyed by steam over the length and breadth 

 of the country is a social advantage which, 

 for manifold purposes, cannot be too much ap- 

 preciated. Some may remember, and have not 

 those suffered from, the old slow and sure 

 system ? 



" This racks the joints, 

 This fires the veins, 

 That every labouring sinew strains," 



might have been the motto of those stage- 

 coaches which in former days pursued their 

 way at the rate of six miles an hour, to the 

 misery, inconvenience, and detention of every 

 passenger that was doomed to the adoption of 

 such conveyances. The pillory would now be 

 preferable to the top of a stage-coach on its 

 passage from London to Exeter on a dark, tem- 

 pestuous night in December, What inex- 

 pressible horrors does the very idea sug- 

 gest ! 



The expense, too, was no trifling consideration ; 

 for after the fare was paid, half of which was 

 recouped if you did not put in an appearance, 

 fees were incessantly demanded and wrung 

 from the luckless traveller, as if he were a sheep 



