364 ANNALS OF THE ROAD. 



credulity that operated so powerfully on the heroes of 

 antiquity ; and, like them, they had their divinations and 

 omens of good and evil. The single magpie foreboded 

 some untoward occurrence, and a hare running across 

 the road before their horses was little less than the floor- 

 ing of their coach. In my early days also they played a 

 game with their passengers which is now never heard of. 

 It was a game of chance — the various things they met 

 on the road constituting the chances. Thus, a horse was 

 so much, a man so much, an ass so much, and so on 

 through almost all the animal creation ; but an old 

 woman, sacrificing (sub dio) to the powers of digestion, 

 won the game at once. 



From the speed of coaches, and the improved breed 

 and condition of coach horses, coachmen are now obliged to 

 be careful to whom they trust the reins; for which reason 

 we do not see so many amateurs at work as we formerly 

 did. It is indeed highly culpable in a coachman to trust 

 the lives of the passengers and his master's property to 

 anyone whom he has not good reason to know is safe. 

 A man, however, may be a very safe and good coachman 

 with horses he knows, and still a very unsafe one on 

 some roads with those to which he is quite a stranger. 



The following is not a very bad way of doing busi- 

 ness, and was communicated to me by a brother amateur : 

 ' When travelling with a coachman I do not know,' said 

 he, ' I always adopt the following plan — that is, if I wish 

 to work. In the first place I never got upon a coach-box 

 yet with anything like half-pay about me ; such as a 

 black handkerchief around my neck, or in blue pantaloons, 



