232 DRIVING. 



the railings of the NewSteine. Happily, in time they all recovered, 

 but it cost some money to cure them. Nothing daunted, the pro- 

 prietors painted the Quicksilver dark brown, renamed her the 

 Criterion, and she resumed her place on the road. Bitterly did 

 Goodman repent his surliness and want of courtesy, for these 

 coaches very sensibly diminished his takings. Poor Bob 

 Pointer had one infirmity, and one very curious peculiarity. 

 He could be depended upon to start at any hour perfectly 

 sober, but it was necessary to have the stables at which horses 

 were changed out of reach of a public-house, or he would get 

 intoxicated before the journey's end. 



Before I leave this coach I must relate a small personal 

 anecdote. I was at a school where our creature comforts were 

 well attended to as far as food went, for we were fed like fighting 

 cocks, and in case of illness were tended by the kind wife of the 

 schoolmaster as though we were her own children. As regards 

 cleanliness, in winter I used to get a warm sea bath three times 

 a week, which in those days, when I don't think people washed 

 as much as they do now, was looked upon as rather an effemi - 

 nate luxury, and in summer we bathed in the sea four or some- 

 times five day? in the week. Now I, with some others of the 

 boys, was idle and liked amusement better than learning my 

 lessons, or doing those to me, who am no poet abominations 

 called verses. The consequence of this combination of unfor- 

 tunate circumstances w r as that I used to go home striped like a 

 hyena, the various stripes representing by their difference of 

 colour the different periods at which I had been caned. 

 Yesterday's wheals would be red ; two or three turning yellow 

 denoted a thrashing of the day before, whilst the green and 

 black and blue were relics of an anterior date. Learn we 

 should, said the pedagogue, and if we did not take it in 

 kindly at one end, we should have it knocked into us at 

 the other. Two stalwart ushers had long thin canes which 

 lapped round one's shoulders, or the small of one's back, and 

 caught the tender under part of the upper arm, and that was 

 indeed pain ; but the doctor himself had a thicker, stiffer and 



