154 ANNALS OF THE ROAD. 



One of these favourites of nature, who measured about 

 six feet four inches, and who had been travelling all 

 nieht in the inside of a mail coach, to the no small 

 annoyance of his opposite fellow-traveller, observed, on 

 the coach stopping to change horses, that he would take 

 that opportunity to get out and stretch his legs ; upon 

 which the other, who was an Irishman, exclaimed with 

 great feeling and justice, ' By Jasus, you have no occasion 

 to do that, for they are quite long enough already." 



The following is a curious illustration of the decline 

 of post chaises : — 



Travelling on the Great North Road lately, I asked 

 the owner of a house which had been a well-known inn 

 but is now a school, if he knew what had become of the 

 numerous post-chaises that formerly rattled over this 

 road. He said that there had been one in the yard until 

 lately, and that he had given it to a carpenter in exchange 

 for forms for his schoolboys to sit on. I have seen a 

 number of these ' yellow po'-chays in a carpenter's 

 yard at Cambridge, awaiting their turn to give up their 

 panels and spokes to be made into some other device 

 of man's ingenuity. I have also seen them serving as 

 summer-houses in the gardens attached to neat suburban 

 villas. 



' To the dragsman of old the present coaches (the 

 drags of the Four-in-Hand and Coaching Clubs) have a 

 somewhat topheavy look, and are all decidedly higher 

 than were the crack post coaches of bygone days. Such 

 vehicles, for instance, as the " Age," the " Rival," or the 

 day mail of the old Brighton Road. Fashion, however, 



