n8 The Trotter. 



of thing has all gone by now ; but I dare say many of my readers 

 can remember the day when one solitary coach drove up three 

 times a week to London from the neighbourhood, and there was no 

 way of getting any commission done in town save through the 

 coachman. What an important personage that coachman used to 

 be, and what a general favourite he was with all ! 



Accommodating, however, as she might be, and useful as a 

 luggage van, the old Regulator still had her faults j and perhaps the 

 one which would have been looked upon as the greatest in this go- 

 ahead age was that she was always behind her time. In the 

 winter, no one could tell at what hour she might come in; 

 and if I happened to go down to the booking-office at seven (she 

 was due at six), I hardly cared to ask if the Regulator was in, but 

 my commonplace question as to what time do you expect her to- 

 night was always met by the same stereotyped answer, " Impossible 

 to say, sir." 



And this may be accounted for in many ways. In the first 

 place, she was a heavy coach in every sense of the word, and over 

 her best ground was never timed at more than eight miles in the 

 hour. Moreover, her old driver had many little private ventures of 

 his own, and had often to pull up by the roadside three or four 

 times in one stage, to transact a little business on his own account. 

 He was a kind of country general dealer, and nothing which he 

 could by any possibility stow away in the old drag came amiss to 

 him. I have known him buy a plough which was standing at a 

 blacksmith's shop by the roadside. It was hoisted on to the roof of 

 the coach and carried twenty miles down the road to an old friend of 

 his, who had long been looking out for such a pattern. I believe we 

 should have had a pair of harrows also, but to find room for them 

 beat even the old boy. He did fancy he could lash them on under 

 the coach, if he only had time. As for live stock, this coach often 

 resembled a menagerie on wheels geese, poultry, pigeons, nothing 

 came amiss. In fact, there was not an article in general use which, 

 to use a phrase of his own, he did not know " where to plant if he 

 could only buy it right." He was fond of asking your opinion as 



