USE OF THE KEY BUGLE. 45 



the guards alluded to could imitate the voices of different 

 animals, and I have seen the large " Spanish Jack," then 

 in the possession of the Duke of Bedford at Woburn, 

 gallop after the coach to find he had been made an ass 

 of, the lad on his back going to post grinning from ear 

 to ear, and the whole thing affording much fun to the 

 genus Joskin as well as the passengers. I could con- 

 siderably extend these reminiscences — to me the theme 

 is a genial one — but I must pull up. There have been 

 changes since those days. How many of the smart 

 whips, then in their prime, have taken the box for the 

 last time on their down journey ! 



' And the grass grows as green on the graves of most 

 of these buglers as it does in front of some of the old 

 wayside and now deserted hostelries they knew so well. 



' John Page. 



' Manchester.' 



' J. S.,' another correspondent, remembered hearing 

 the key-bugle played by the guard on the mail coach 

 between Portpatrick and Ayr, and also on the mail 

 between Limerick and Tralee. ' L. R. P.' puts on 

 record his boyish recollections of a guard on the royal 

 mail from Holyhead to London playing on a key-bugle 

 when passing his father's house on the outskirts of 

 Chester. He especially calls to mind that on Sunday 

 evening the guard did honour to the day by ' treating us 

 to the " Old Hundredth," and well he played it too.' He 

 adds the testimony of his mother, eighty years of age, 

 and in full possession of her faculties, who remembered 



