2 74 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



found his coaches running emj^ty. Before finally 

 heaten, he had even gone the length of re-estah- 

 lishins: some coaches orio-inally withdrawn in 

 1836, on the opening of the Grand Junction 

 Railway. The reasons for this were many. The 

 train - service in those early days Avas \ery 

 poor, and engine-power insufficient, so that lieavy 

 loads, rain-showers that made the rails slippery, 

 and the innumerable minor accidents always 

 happening to the engines themselves, made 

 travelling by railway not only uncertain, but, 

 in not a few instances, even slower than by 

 coach. Railway officials, too, Avere insolent to 

 an incredible desrree. Only when one has read 

 the " Letters to the Editor " in contemporary 

 journals can we have any idea of that insolence. 

 The j^ublic complained that, having run the 

 coaches off and secured a monopoly, the officials, 

 finding themselves masters of the situation, 

 behaved accordingly like masters, and not like the 

 servants of the public they really Avere, or should 

 have been. Newspaper comments dotted the i's 

 and crossed the t's, and generally empliasised and 

 embroidered these grievances. It is not, then, 

 to be Avondered at that a regret for " the good 

 old times " found expression, or that coaches 

 reappeared for a Avliile. Many coach-proprietors 

 Averc deceived by this i:)artly indignant, partly 

 sentimental attitude, and Avhen they liad com- 

 mitted themselves to a rcAival did not iiiid the 

 sujiport Avhich, from the ncAvspaper outcry, they 

 might reasonably have expected. Thus early do 



