352 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE K 



all three outsides (the trinity of Pariahs) made a 

 vain attempt to sit down at the same breakfast- 

 tahle or dinner-tahle with the consecrated four ? 

 I myself witnessed such an attem^it ; and on that 

 occasion a benevolent old gentleman endeavoured 

 to soothe his three holy associates hy suggesting 

 that if the outsides were indicted for this criminal 

 attempt at the next assizes, the court would regard 

 it as a case of lunacy or delirium tremens rather 

 than that of treason. England owes much of her 

 grandeur to the depth of the aristocratic element 

 in her social composition when pulling against 

 her own strong democracy. I am not the man 

 to laugh at it. But sometimes, undoul)tedly, it 

 expressed itself in comic shapes. The course taken 

 with the infatuated outsiders, in the particular 

 attempt which I have noticed, was that the waiter, 

 beckoning them away from the privileged salle-a- 

 manger, sang out, 'This Avay, my good men,' and then 

 enticed these good men away to the kitchen. But 

 that plan had not always answered. Sometimes, 

 though rarely, cases occurred where the intruders, 

 being stronger than usual, or more vicious than 

 usual, resolutely refused to Inidge, and so far 

 carried their point as to have a separate table 

 arranged for themselves in a corner of the general 

 room. Yet, if an Indian screen could be found 

 ample enough to plant them out from the very 

 eyes of the high table or dais, it then became 

 possible to assume as a fiction of law that the 

 three delf felloAVs after all were not present. They 

 could be ignored by the porcelain men, under the 



