USE OF THE KEY BUGLE. 



43 



CHAPTER X. 



USE OF THE KEY-BUGLE. 



The fact of the occasional use of the key- bugle on mail 

 coaches has been questioned, and curiously conflicting 

 evidence on the subject was given in a series of contro- 

 versial letters which appeared in ' The Field ' in the 

 summer of 1873. In the first of these letters, ' Ex-Mail- 

 Coachman,' then in his eighty- first year, positively asserts 

 that ' no bugle was allowed on the mails ; the only in- 

 strument used was the long, straight horn, blown by 

 the guard only when occasion required it/ In the next 

 letter, signed ' E. L. L.' regret is expressed ' at the 

 gradual supplanting of the fine old key-bugle by the 

 cornopean. The old order changeth,' he says, 'yielding 

 place to new in most things, and in not a few I think we 

 must confess " the old is better." E. L. L. remembered 

 first hearing the key-bugle in his boyhood, 'when 

 travelling up to Eton from the lower part of Devon- 

 shire three times in each year,' and he states that there 

 were then many good performers on the road, and that 

 among them Jack Goodwin was his especial favourite. 

 The use of the key-bugle is positively asserted in an 

 interesting letter signed ' John Page, Manchester.' His 

 statement is as follows : — 



