ii8 THE COACHING ERA 



box picks hisself up, and so does we all, and looks round 

 to count damage. Bob's head cut open and his hat gone, 

 'nother young gent's hat gone; mine knocked in at the 

 side, and not one on us as wasn't black and blue some- 

 wheres or other, most on 'em all over. Two pound ten 

 to pay for damage to paint, which they subscribed for 

 there and then, and give Bob and me an extra half- 

 sovereign each; but I wouldn't go down that line again 

 not for twenty half-sovereigns." 



In due time the schoolboys grew up, and the coachmen 

 who had driven them to Eton or Rugby for many years, 

 and treated them with extensive patronage, took to 

 touching their hats and calling them "Sir," when with 

 lordly arrogance they once more travelled by coach, not 

 as boys any longer, but men of one of the Universities. 

 Their partiality for the outside still remained, though 

 they ceased to think of it as a vantage ground for pea- 

 shooting. 



"The air, the freedom of prospeft, the proximity to 

 the horses, the elevation of seat — these were what we 

 required; but, above all, the certain anticipation of pur- 

 chasing occasional opportunities of driving," wrote 

 De Quincey describing the struggle between inclination 

 and convention which exercised the feelings of "young 

 Oxford," who, though detesting the inside of the coach, 

 yet smarted under the stigma which attached to all 

 "outsiders." "We, the most aristocratic of people, who 

 were addidled to the pradlice of looking down supercili- 

 ously even upon the insides themselves as often very 

 questionable charafters — were we, by voluntarily going 

 outside, to court indignities?" 



