14 NIMROD'S NORTHERN TOUR. 



a country than a city. One circumstance, however, attended my 

 entrance into it which I am quite certain never occurred before, and I 

 may venture to predict will never occur again. It was the first of 

 November — popularly considered the first day of winter — and the water- 

 carts were at work, not only in the streets, but on the roads ! 



I had the choice of two coaches to take me to the north, but fixed on the 

 Wellington, because I like the name ; it is borne by a man who has not 

 only done honour to his country in the field, but w^ho is its best friend in 

 the senate, as after-times will show. At half-past three o'clock then, 

 I started on the box of this said Wellington coach, from the Bull and 

 Mouth Hotel, when 1 found I was by the side of a coachman whom I knew 

 very well by sight; but as I never travelled by his coach*', he had lost 

 all recollection of me. This was *' Old Penny," as he is called — not 

 much of a misnomer, by the bye — one of the few to be seen on rather a 

 swell drag out of London, of the low-crown'd, broad-brimm'd, shawl- 

 neckerchief 'd, large-pocketted, silver-button'd, box-coated, knee-capp'd, 

 old fashioned coachmen, '* with an hue as florid as vermilion'd Jove ;*^ 

 who can no more help thrusting both their hands into their coat-pockets 

 at the change, and ''just stepping into the house to say a word to 

 Missis," than they could go two months without their dinners. But 

 this just stepping in and stepping out every change between London and 

 Huntingdon, where Penny stops, may be " Penny- wise," but the 

 proprietors must find it " pound-fooHsh," for time must be lost by it, or 

 else made up at the expense of the stock. Old habits, however, are diffi- 

 cult to break through, and my old acquaintance has always been accus- 

 tomed to heavy work. He is, however, a good man with heavy iiorses, 



* Tlie Exeter Subscription Coach from the Bull and Moutli ; and here let me 

 remark that all the Bull and Mouth coaches have their wheels secured by screAvs, 



