i iS ANNALS OF THE ROAD. 



mail ; and, if they keep it on through the winter, their 

 monthly accounts will speak pretty plainly for themselves 

 as to the harm it will do to their own summer earnings. 

 It will be sure, moreover, to make the " Item " a fixture 

 on the road ; for, as they well know, this beautifully- 

 horsed coach is in the hands of a terrible stiff-necked 

 obstinate party when once offended, and in the winter- 

 time, when the City swells are behind their counters and 

 " minding the shops," this will be by no means a pointless 

 thorn in the side of the "Dart" and "New Times." 

 There is a coachman, by the way, at work on the " Star" 

 who deserves a better place, and I hope before long that 

 Bill Penny may be seen once more by daylight, for where 

 you find one better, you will travel with twenty inferior 

 performers. 



' And here I may observe that, in spite of all that 

 Nimrod brings forward to justify his predilection for 

 night work, I cannot persuade myself to view it in the 

 same favourable colours, or to consider the life of a night 

 coachman an enviable one for a constancy. It is all very 

 pleasant for a gentleman on a fine night, either summer 

 or winter, to work forty or fifty miles on a journey for 

 business or amusement, (and I have found as much de- 

 light in doing so as any man, and have often abandoned 

 my claret for the coach box, as poor Skinner, on the 

 Glasgow mail, from Boroughbridge to Doncaster, if alive, 

 and his partner, could testify). But when we take into 

 the account the perpetual privation of natural repose (for 

 no man, as the Irishman says, can get a good night's rest 

 by day), and the ravages on the constitution produced by 



