POSTING JN ENGLAND. 311 



I have digressed, but these reminiscences of old customs 

 may help to give those who were unborn in the days of posting 

 an idea of the road when this mode of travelling was in vogue. 

 There are still left some who remember those days, but time 

 has rolled on and they are in a small minority and are rapidly 

 passing away. To return to the way in which this service was 

 performed, I must repeat that each pair of horses and their 

 postboy came out in turn. For example, forty pair of horses 

 had ten postboys and ten cads to drive them. When there 

 was a good run on the road and all ten postboys with their 

 first pair were out, if a carriage drove up the second pair 

 belonging to the first pair of horses that had gone out had 

 become ' first turn,' and they were driven by the cad. He had 

 proper boots and breeches, and a jacket of the proper colour 

 a detail to which allusion will presently be made. If on the 

 journey they met the boy to whom the horses belonged return- 

 ing home, the carriage was pulled up and the boys changed 

 places ; this scarcely took a minute, and off they went again. 

 There was a regular tariff. If the boy was met one-third of 

 the way, the cad got one-third of the fee, whatever it was, that 

 the postboy received ; if they met half-way, he got one-half ; 

 if he had gone more, he got two-thirds. 



Going into London, of course the carriage was driven to the 

 houses of the owners say to Grosvenor or Berkeley Square, 

 or the streets adjacent and was taken, when the owners had 

 alighted, to their stables. The horses were taken to bait at 

 stables they always used for the purpose, always situated on 

 the high road for instance, on the North road in Islington ; 

 coming from Newmarket and Cambridge, or the Chelmsford 

 and Eastern roads in Whitechapel ; and on the Western roads 

 in Kensington, Netting Hill, or Shepherd's Bush. If a cad, 

 or with four horses one or both boys were cads, they would 

 commence, when yards got off, a peculiar cry ; we can only 

 describe it as ' How pow powie ' in a high shrill voice ; then 

 if the regular boy had deposited his carriage and got back 

 to his baiting place, you would see him come running out of 



