3o2 STAGECOACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



as an indifferent Avliip. Perliaj)s, in fact, he 

 was, but the "Lynn Union" was never a dashing 

 coach, and gave no opportunity of displaying the 

 skill demanded on others. 



Tommy Cross was never so pleased as ^^'hen he 

 could pick up a hox-seat passenger well grounded 

 in the classics, or interested in poetry — for poetry 

 first, and the classics afterwards, engaged his 

 thoughts. lie drove four-in-hand all day, and 

 when his day's work Avas done retired to some 

 solitary chamber and mounted Pegasus, who 

 carried him on the Avings of the wind to the un- 

 earthly regions where dwell the sjnrits of Homer 

 and Virgil. In short, he seems altogether to have 

 lived a fine confused unpractical life, reflected to 

 some degree in his book. The Autobiography of a 

 Stage- Coachman, an interesting but formless work, 

 so lacking in arrangement that it is difficult from 

 its pages to gain any very clear view of his career, 

 and actually impossible from it to discover Avhat 

 Avas the name of the Lynn coach he drove and so 

 constantly mentions. That it Avas the " Union " 

 only independent inquiries disclose. The name 

 " Union " must in later years have taken an 

 equivocal and prophetic meaning to poor Thomas, 

 for, like many another coachman, he saAV Avitli 

 ajiprehension raihvays l^uildiug all OA^er the country 

 and running the coaches oif successive roads. He 

 knew his oavii turn must come, and Avas early 

 seized Avitli fears for the future. In 18i3 he 

 published, at Cambridge, in jiamphlet form, some 

 verses in imitation of Gray's Elegy in a Country 



