" GOD-PERMITS" 



15 



£150; and, moreover, had the assistance of one clerk 

 and three letter-carriers. 



Meanwhile the stage-coaches had increased greatly. 

 It was about 1800 that the " Sick, Lame, and Lazy " 

 — a sober conveyance so called from the nature of its 

 passengers, invalids, real and imaginary, on their way 

 to Bath — was disjjlaced by the new post coach that 

 performed the journey in a single day ; and thus the 

 comfortable, and expensive, beds of the " Pelican " at 

 Speenhamland, where " the coach slept," began to be 

 disestablished. 



Ill 



OuPv foreftithers of the coaching age were jDroperly 

 pious. Desirous, when they travelled, of a " happy 

 issue out of all their afflictions," as the Prayer-book 

 has it — which in their case included such varied 

 troubles as highwaymen's attacks, being uj^set, or 

 finding themselves snowed up, with the extreme 

 likelihood in winter-time of being severely frost- 

 bitten — they made their wills, and fervently committed 

 themselves to the protection of Providence before 

 starting and putting themselves in the care of the 

 coachman. Coach proprietors, for their part, always 

 advertised their conveyances to run "D.V. ; " and the 

 more slangy among our great - grandparents were 

 accordingly accustomed to speak of these coaches as 

 " God-permits." Express trains, which stop for 

 nothing in heaven above or the earth beneath, short 

 of a cataclysm of nature, have relegated that joke to 



