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CHAPTER I 



THE INTRODUCTION OF CARRIAGES 



" Ah ! sure it was a coat of steel, 

 Or good tough oak, he wore, 

 Who first unto the ticklish wheel 

 'Gan harness horses four." 



The lines quoted above are not remarkably good 

 as poetry. Nay, it is possible to go farther, and to 

 say that they are exceptionally bad— the product 

 of one of those corn-box poets who were accus- 

 tomed to speak of steam as a " demon foul " ; but 

 if his lines are bad verse, the central idea is good. 

 That man who first essayed to drive four-in-hand 

 must indeed have been more than usually 



To form anything at all like an adequate idea 

 of the Coaching Age, it is first necessary to 

 discover how people travelled before that age 

 dawned. As a picture is made by contrasted 

 light and shade, so is the story of the coaching 

 yoL. I, 1 1 



