CH. I LE MAIL COACH I 



J 



' "The mail still announced itself by the merry notes of the 

 * horn ; the hedge-cutter or the rick-thatcher might still know the 

 ' exact hour by the unfailing yet otherwise meteoric apparition of 

 'the pea-green Tally-ho or the yellow Independent. — George 

 'Eliot, Felix Holt." ' 



Webster's Dictionary (1892) gives the same er- 

 roneous definition. Worcester's last edition is cor- 

 rect, and gives only the proper meaning of the word. 



After having been for so long a time thus popu- 

 larly used, the expression will probably survive, but 

 coaching men, at least, should avoid it. 



In somewhat the same way, the coach has in 

 France come to have the name : ' Le Mail.' A mail- 

 coach, as will be described later, is different from a 

 staee-coach, and it is the sta«-e-coach which has been 

 copied for pleasure purposes ; not the mail-coach. 



Mortimer d'Ocagne {Le Mail Coach e?i France, 

 p. 3) says : ' At the outset we must make a com- 

 ' ment upon the title of this little sketch. One 

 ' should not say, a mail coach. In reality, the mail is 

 ' the carriage which carries the mails, but the use 

 ' of this name has become general in France, and 

 ' every one says, a mail ; the sporting journals them- 

 4 selves often speak of the meet of the mails. We 

 ' will not assume an authority to change this way of 

 'speaking, but we must note its inaccuracy.'* 



* ' Des la premiere ligne il nous faut faire une reserve contre le titre 

 ' meme de cette notice. On ne devrait pas dire un mail coach. En 

 ' effet, le mail, c'est la malle, la malle poste ; mais 1' usage est pris en 

 * France et tout le monde dit un mail ; les journaux de sport eux- 



