114 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



quondam valet, Ijraggart before the timorous, but 

 shaking with the fear of death upon him when the 

 pretended highwayman appears ; his wife, aping 

 a gentility as mean as it is transparently false ; 

 the money-loving and peace-loving but satirical 

 Jew ; the lively Miss Jenny, and the waggoner, are 

 all types, slightly caricatured, but true to the life 

 of the period. Putting aside the question as to 

 whether such people could be conjured out of his 

 inner consciousness without some basis of fact, we 

 must consider that Smollett, writing of his OAvn 

 time, would not for his own sake be likely to draw 

 a picture which would seem a forced or unnatural 

 representation of the wayfaring life of the period. 

 Thus, when he makes his characters journey for 

 five days in this manner, and brings them on the 

 sixth to an inn where the landlord gives the meal 

 they had bespoken to three gentlemen who had 

 just arrived, we think we learn something of the 

 contempt with which almost every one looked down 

 upon passengers by stage-waggons. The gentlemen 

 themselves said : " The passengers in the waggon 



might be d d ; their betters must be served 



before them ; they supposed it would be no hard- 

 ship on such travellers to dine on bread-and-cheese 

 for one day." And the poor devils certainly Avould 

 have gone without their meal had it not been for 

 that good fellow Joey, the waggoner, who, entering 

 the kitchen of the inn with a pitchfork in his 

 hand, swore he Avould be the death of any man 

 who should pretend to seize the victuals prepared 

 for the waggon. " On this," says Smollett, "the 



