GOING BY COACH : BOOKING OFFICES 325 



very early rising indeed for Avould-be i^assengers, 

 and not even that hardy generation endured the 

 infliction without a very great deal of grumbling. 

 But there Avas no remedy. It was only a choice 

 of ills, Avhether you had to he called at a little 

 after three o'clock on perhaj^s a winter's morning 

 for a day's journey, or whether you elected to wait 

 until the afternoon, and so, travelling through 

 the night, were deposited at your journey's end on 

 the pavements of Bath or Birmingham, or some 

 other strange place, at the inhospitable hours 

 between midnight and six a.m.; in which latter 

 case you would be in that extremely unpleasant 

 position of wanting to go to bed when the rest 

 of the world was considering the expediency of 

 getting out of it. 



Some, difficult to arouse in the early morn, 

 adopted the heroic expedient of sitting up all 

 night. Others, like Leigh Hunt and James Payn, 

 taught by long experience, engaged a bedroom 

 overnight at the inn whence the coach started, so 

 that they might be on the spot and lie two hours 

 longer. Even then, as Payn confessed, he often 

 slept too long, and so, without breakfast, often 

 carrying his boots in his hand, and in other ways 

 not completely dressed, would dash into the coach 

 at the very moment of itls moving away. 



"We have often wondered," wrote Dickens, 

 "how many months' incessant travelling in a post- 

 chaise it would take to kill a man; and, wondering 

 by analogy, we should very much like to know 

 how many months of constant travelling in a 



