THE STAGE-WAGGONS 129 



the other side of the distant hills. With a sack 

 over his shoulders and jieace in his mind, he could 

 greet the rainy days with joke and song, or endure 

 even the wintry horrors of December and January 

 with equanimity ; yet when spring was come and 

 grass grew green and the bare, ruined boughs of the 

 trees began to be clothed again with leaves, not 

 even the old heathen Greeks and Romans in their 

 Floralia celebrated the coming again of the sun 

 with more heartiness. His horses and himself 

 were decked with ribbons on May Day, his sweet- 

 heart had some longed-for present from the Great 

 City, and not even the blackbird on the hawthorn 

 spray sang a merrier tune, as he drove his team 

 along their steady pace. 



It is not a little difficult to pronounce an 

 opinion upon the fares which the poor folk paid 

 by stage -Avaggon. Prices varied widely. On the 

 Great North Eoad in 1780, between London and. 

 Edinburgh, the measure was, indeed, not by miles 

 but by days ; but as the journey took fourteen 

 days, and the fare was a shilling a day, and the 

 distance covered was 390 miles, we can figure it 

 out at about twenty-eight miles a day at something 

 less than a halfpenny a mile. Early stage-waggons 

 to Cambridge, however, ajjpear to have exacted 

 three-halfpence a mile, and moved with incredible 

 sloAvness, taking two and a half days to perform 

 the fifty-one miles, and sleeping two nights upon 

 the road. On the Bath Road the waggon-fare 

 seems to have been something less than a penny 

 a mile. 



YOL. I, 9 



