322 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



If you did not put in an appearance, the deposit 

 was, of course, forfeited. 



Dickens, who as a reporter in his early years 

 was very intimately acquainted with coach travel- 

 ling and all the manners and customs connected 

 Avith it, has left a very picturesque description of 

 a coach hooking-office and its occupants. The first 

 impression received by the prospective traveller 

 was of his own unimportance. One entered 

 a mouldy-looking room, ornamented with large 

 posting-hills, the greater part of the place enclosed 

 behind a huge lumbering rough counter, and 

 fitted up with recesses like the dens of the smaller 

 animals in a travelling menagerie, without the 

 bars. At these booking-ofiices, in fact, one booked 

 parcels as well as passengers, and into these 

 recesses the parcels were flung, with an air of 

 recklessness at Avhich the passenger who might 

 have chanced to buy a new carpet-bag that 

 morning would feel considerably annoyed. 



The boo]\ing-ofiice to Avliich Dickens here refers 

 was at the "Golden Cross," Chariiig Cross ; but 

 booking-ofiices were all very much alike, and were 

 exceedingly dreary and uncomfortable places, 

 resembling modern ofiices for the reception of 

 l^arcels : — 



" Porters, like so many Atlases, keep rushing 

 in and out, with large packages on their shoulders ; 

 and while you are waiting to make the necessary 

 inquiries, you wonder what on earth the booking- 

 ofiice clerks can have been before they were 

 booking-ofiice clerks ; one of them, with his i^en 



