CHAPTER XV 



HOW THE COACH PASSENGERS FARED : MANNERS 

 AND CUSTOMS DOWN THE ROAD 



There is no consensus of opinion to be found 

 among travellers by coacli on the subject of the 

 joys or sorrows of old-time travel. Everything 

 depended on the Aveather, the coach, the other 

 passengers, and upon the nature of the traveller 

 himself. Sometimes a coach journey was a 

 misery ; at others it was a joy to look back 

 upon. Humourists of the early and mid- 

 eighteenth century found the subject of coach- 

 travelling very attractive, and returned again 

 and again to the stock characters of the brag- 

 gart and domineering military man among the 

 passengers, who was really a coward, and the 

 modest, unassuming young man who always 

 killed or dispersed the highwaymen while the 

 captain, who by his own account had fought 

 at families with Marlborough, prostrated him- 

 self on the floor and tried to crawl under the 

 petticoats of the lady passengers or cover him- 

 self with the straw that streAved the floor. 

 Those humourists could always get a laugh 

 from such accounts, and sighs of appreciation 

 from the ladies, who all wished they numbered 



