I02 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



"From Harborough to Northampton I had a 

 most dreadful journey. It rained incessantly, and 

 as before we had been covered with dust, so now 

 we were soaked with rain. My neighbour, the 

 young man who sat next me in the middle, every 

 now and then fell asleep ; and when in this state 

 he perpetually bolted and rolled against me with 

 the whole weight of his body, more than once 

 nearly pushing me from my seat, to Avhich I clung 

 with the last strength of despair. My forces were 

 nearly giving way, when at last, haj^pily, we 

 reached Northampton, on the evening of July 14th, 

 1782, an ever-memorable day to me. 



" On the next morning I took an inside place 

 for London. We started early. The journey from 

 Northampton to the metropolis, however, I can 

 scarcely call a ride, for it was a perpetual motion, 

 or endless jolt from one place to another, in 

 a close wooden box, over what appeared to be 

 a heap of unhewn stones and trunks of trees 

 scattered by a hurricane. To make my happiness 

 complete, I had three travelling companions, all 

 farmers, who slept so soundly that even the 

 hearty knocks with which they hammered their 

 heads against each other and against mine did 

 not awake them. Their faces, bloated and dis- 

 coloured by ale and brandy and the knocks 

 aforesaid, looked, as they lay before me, like so 

 many lumps of dead flesh. I looked, and certainly 

 felt, like a crazy fool when Ave arrived at London 

 in the afternoon." 



