362 DRIVING. 



To carry heavy loads on bad roads it has been found in 

 America, as in Europe, that the carriages must be strong and 

 weighty ; but for light loads, light carriages, hung low between 

 light and high wheels, do the work required in a satisfactory way. 

 But it must not be expected that such carriages provide all 

 the comfort and convenience of European carriages which have 

 been criticised, improved, and remodelled time after time and 

 year after year by all the makers of Europe, who have competed 

 among themselves for nearly forty years at numerous great 

 international and other exhibitions. 



Changes of ideas, tastes, and fashions take place in most 

 countries, and although thirty years ago European carriages 

 taken to the States were condemned by reason of their weight, 

 that is not so now, for as the upper classes of Americans came 

 over to Europe in thousands and travelled not only over the 

 most accessible but over remoter parts, they found that the 

 European types of carriages had so many merits and advan- 

 tages, that they bought and ordered them freely, and took them 

 home for ordinary use in their own country. 



To such an extent did this happen, that the coachmakers 

 of America had to adapt their work to the altered tastes of 

 American buyers, and one now sees in New York, in Chicago, 

 and in the cities on the Pacific coast, that London taste prevails! 

 as regards carriage fashions. 



About fifty years ago gigs on two wheels swarmed on the 

 suburban roads round London, mornings and evenings, for* 

 the bankers, merchants, and traders who lived in the outskirts, 

 drove up to their offices in the morning in their gigs, returning 

 in the same way in the evening. Where the establishment 

 was small and the gig the only carriage kept, the gig-house 

 built at the side of the residence was indispensable, and many 

 of these diminutive gig-houses may still be seen on some of 

 the roads leading into London, just as a few of the ' torch 

 extinguishers ' still remain in some of the older squares of 

 London, attached to the area railings one on each side of the 

 principal entrance reminding one of times when footmen. 



