HOJV THE COACH PASSENGERS FARED 337 



romantically agreed upon turned out a par- 

 ticularly unhappy one. 



The final test of a gentleman in those days 

 was his behaviour at a stage-coach dinner. It 

 Avas, if you consider it, a very severe and unfair 

 test, for it is allowed that politeness generally 

 leaves starving people at an early stage; and 

 the appetites that coach passengers brought with 

 them into the dining-room of an inn were usually 

 very keen. An acquaintance of Constable, the 

 painter, could find no more striking climax to 

 a list of his virtues than to declare that he Avas 

 " a gentleman at a stage-coach dinner." " Then," 

 said his companion, " he must have been a 

 gentleman indeed ! " 



AYbat, then, did it mean, this gentlemanly 

 conduct ? It meant, in short, that one w^ho 

 could fairly lay claim to it must take some lady 

 of the party into his care, escort her from the 

 coach into the inn, see to it that she was pro- 

 vided Avith dinner, and pay her reckoning. He 

 must not first attempt to satisfy his own hunger, 

 although perhaps he Avas up at five o'clock in 

 the morning, and had only taken a hurried coach- 

 breakfast at the first stage out. 



The gentleman aa ho fulfilled the canons of this 

 time could rarely hope to get any dinner for 

 himself. On the later coaches, time was so 

 strictly kept that the coachmen Avere off to the 

 minute ; and the landlords, avIio, of course, knew 

 that, Avere generally suspected of delaying the 

 appearance of the food so long that not one of 

 VOL. I. 22 



