CHAPTER VIII DOWN THE ROAD 



A JOURNEY by coach was not a thing to 

 be undertaken lightly or unadvisedly, but 

 required due thought and deliberation before 

 paying a visit to the booking-office, and 

 securing a seat by the expedient of paying half the fare 

 in advance. When the intending passenger had thus 

 irretrievably committed himself, he returned home in 

 deep depression at the thought of what lay before him, 

 and evinced an hourly increasing solicitude as to the 

 state of the weather. Then, as now, that important 

 factor was never to be depended upon, whilst its in- 

 fluence on a coach journey was paramount; if it was fine 

 few things were more delightful; if, on the contrary, it 

 elefted to rain or snow nothing could equal it for misery 

 and discomfort. 



The traveller who booked his seat in advance was 

 usually a fatalist, being firmly convinced that if he took 

 a place inside the coach the sun would blaze down so 

 that the four insides were nearly stifled with the heat, 

 whilst if he engaged a seat on the roof he was equally 

 certain to be drenched with rain, or frozen with cold; 

 unhappy alternatives which gave much food for thought. 

 The question of inside or out was in the latter coach- 

 ing days one of individual seledlion; earlier travellers did 

 not consider there was any choice in the matter. If they 

 had the smallest respe6l for themselves or their position 

 in society, they went inside as a matter of course. The 



outside passengers who balanced themselves uneasily on 



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