THE LIFE OF A SPORTSMAN 



coach-box, to reflect that, whilst driving their own hne and 

 well-appointed teams, they are affording instruction and 

 example to their humbler and hard-working fellow-creatures, 

 as well as performing a patriotic and public good ; and as for 

 the too connnon but erroneous opinion amongst certain classes 

 of society, that a man cannot fre(|uent a public coach-box 

 without being morbidly infected in manners and good taste, 

 by coming in contact with one very much his inferior, the 

 notion is too absurd for even a comment. Did the learned 

 Dr. Paley suffer, either in his manners or his morals, by con- 

 versing, as was his custom, with every artificer he could o-et 

 hold of in his walks ? No, the case is quite otherwise ; and 

 those public coachmen who have come most in contact with 

 amateurs in their line, are uniformly improved by so doino-; 

 — they are better coachmen and better men. You hear from 

 them no ill language, no gross and offensive expressions — to 

 the female ear especially ; and what is of still more import- 

 ance, you are not disgusted by insolence to the inferior class 

 of passengers on their coaches ; neither are your feelings out- 

 raged by unnecessary cruelty to the animals placed under 

 their control, and, by consequence, at their mercy. I was 

 gratified, indeed, by an answer strongly corroborative of what 

 I have asserted, which I lately received from one of them to 

 my remark, that a leader in his team trotted along before the 

 bars, doing little beyond carrying her harness. '' Slie cannot 

 work, Sir John," said her coachman ; " there is nothing left in 

 her but a good heart, and I do not like to whip that out of 

 her." I made no reply ; but I silently put up a prayer, that 

 neither the head nor the heart of that man might ache on this 

 side of eternity, and that the humane expression would be found 

 booked to his credit on the other.' 



' You have advocated your cause ably,' said Goodall ; ' and 

 although no coachman myself, I can neither discern folly 

 nor anything approaching to impropriety, in gentlemen 

 driving their own coaches, and entering scientifically into the 

 pursuit, as others do by that of the turf. All that I have 

 read on the subject upholds them. If the Athenians, for 

 example, the most polished nation of all antiquity, deemed it 

 a feather in their caps to be esteemed skilful charioteers, why 

 should Englishmen consider it a disgrace ? Does not Homer 

 make his Nestor the wisest man and the best coachman of 



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