PETER PRY'S LETTER. 71 



CHAPTER XV. 



PETER PRY'S LETTER. — COACHMEN. YARDS. 



In recalling those old times it is interesting to form an 

 acquaintance with the actors in them. Some remi- 

 niscences of them are to be found in the volumes of the 

 ' Sporting Magazine ' of forty or fifty years ago, which 

 introduce us to the most celebrated coachmen of mails 

 and stage-coaches. The first of these whom I shall 

 present to my readers is one Cartwright, who drove the 

 York Express coach from Buckden to Welwyn. He 

 is thus described by a writer who signs himself Peter 

 Pry: 



' Mr. Cartwright drives the York Express coach 

 from Buckden to Welwyn and back every day, about 

 seventy miles, for one or two stages of which he provides 

 horses. He has done this for many years, with scarcely 

 any intermission. I consider him under fifty years 

 of age, bony, without fat, healthy-looking, evidently the 

 effect of abstemiousness ; not too tall, but just the size to 

 sit gracefully and powerfully, as well as to render his 

 getting up and down easy. The moment he has got his 

 seat and made his start, you are struck at once with the 

 perfect mastership of his art : the hand just over his left 



