346 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



young peojile, neatly clad, rather shy, hut courte- 

 ously importunate, plied the passengers. 



Thoresby records a similar custom at Grantham, 

 near by, on one of his journeys. Under date of 

 May 4th, 1714, he says : " We dined at Grantham, 

 and had the usual solemnity, being the first pas- 

 sage of the coach this season ; the coachman and 

 horses decked with ribbons and flowers, and the 

 toAvn music and young people in coujiles before 

 us." The " town music " Avas Avliat we should 

 nowadays call the Town Band. 



When such courtesies obtained alons; the 

 roads the coachmen and guards would have been 

 churlish not to have, in some prominently visible 

 manner, done honour to the season. And, indeed, 

 May Day and sjiringtime decorations were features 

 on most coaches. The coachman's whij^stock was 

 ornamented with gay ribbons and bunches of 

 flowers, while the coachman himself wore a floral 

 nosegay that rivalled a prize cabbage in size. The 

 guard was no less remarkable a figure, and his 

 horn was wreathed with the most lively display of 

 blossoms. Eestoons of flowers and sprays of ever- 

 greens so draped and covered the coach that the 

 insides, peering out upon the festivities, very 

 closely resembled those antic figures, the " Jacks- 

 in-the-Green," that used on May Day to prance 

 and make merry from the midst of an embowering 

 canopy of foliage, even so late as thirty years ago, 

 in London streets. The horses, too, bore their part. 

 Their new harness and saddle-cloths, the rosettes 

 and Avreaths of laurel on tlieir heads, smartened 



