6 NIMROUS NORTHERN TOUR. 



availed himself of the momentum of increased speed when it 

 arrived on level ground. 



Although my ride by the side of Watson was a short one, as 

 I was going no 'farther than Rochester, we discussed many sub- 

 jects in succession by the way. At last the New Sporting 

 Magazine turned up. " I wonder," said he, " who wrote that 

 punishing account of us Dover coachmen, though to be sure the 

 description he gave of the changing at Gravesend was not much 

 amiss. I dare say it was Nimrod. But I won't have* that 20 

 a year for the washerwoman's bill ; no no that won't do ; 

 what's to become of the baker's bill at that rate ? But the best 

 of the joke was," continued he, " I was spending an evening at 

 the house of a friend of mine, in London, about the time that 

 number of the Magazine came out, when it was read aloud to the 

 party, and no one but my friend knew I was a coachman, and a 

 Dover coachman too ! ; Twas a hardish hit, but I stood it like 

 brick and mortar, tailor's bill and all."t But really looking at 

 Watson on his box this day his clean shirt, his well starched 

 neckcloth, and everything else clean about him not omitting 

 the good bit of broad-cloth and well brushed beaver, nor, above 

 all things the neat balconyed house, on the terrace, a mile out 

 of Dover, where he pulled up to drop a word to Mrs. Watson, 

 looking at all this, I say, who can but rejoice that the liberality 

 of the British public enables a man of this grade in life to do 

 credit to his calling one of no small importance to such a gad- 

 about people as the English and to induce him to persevere in 

 that line of conduct which will ensure him a lengthened con- 

 tinuance of it ? 



I have not yet done with Watson and his coach. Observing 

 Mrs. Watson, as she stood at the window, to cast an anxious 

 look at her husband as he was in the act of mounting his box,, 

 I was cogitating within myself whether there might not be some- 

 thing in it that was ominous, and looked for " the raven on the 

 chimney's top," when Watson himself thus dispelled the illusion. 

 "My missus,"'^ said he, "will be anxious to see how I stand it 

 this journey, for this is the first day I have been at work for 

 these last ten weeks. I have been laid up with a bad leg from a 

 scrape of the roller-bolt, and thought at one time I was book'd 

 by the down mail at all events, that nothing but the knife could 

 have saved me.' ; The mention of this circumstance, however, 

 might have been omitted by me here, had it not been associated 

 with a curious fatality that has attended some of ourvery best road 



* A flash word for "believe" or "acknowledge." 

 t Stated at ^100 per annum, Vide vol. vii. p. 316. 



