40 Seventy Years a Master, 



coaches, and it is not at all to be wondered at 

 that the arrival of the iron horse was regarded 

 with a great deal of suspicion and aversion. 

 Many of those to whom the coaching trade 

 was a matter of vital importance feared, and 

 only too truly, that the railways for them 

 meant blue ruin. I can well recall the days 

 when the decline of the coaching trade began 

 to be seriously felt. But there were many of 

 the old drivers who would not believe that 

 coaching was doomed. You must know that 

 at first there was a vast amount of prejudice 

 against the railways, and those who loved 

 horses were not sparing in their abuse of the 

 '^ nasty, smoky, stinking things," as trains 

 were then called. (Yes, and much worse 

 descriptions than that were common enough.) 

 It is amusing to now look back on the 

 days when the trains first began to run, 

 and to recall that the men at work in the 

 fields on either side of the railway would 

 leave their tasks and run to see the train 



go by, shouting *^ Here comes the old 



screamer." 



