50 OXFORD 



frequented out of London ; but, not seeing my way quite 

 clear, I declined — and it was quite as well I did, the 

 coach, as I might have foreseen, being discontinued within 

 the year. 



Now, there were two parties in Oxford concerned in 

 coaches, one of whom I have before spoken of as an old- 

 established country proj)rietor — a man of the first 

 respectability and considerable substance, who was looked 

 up to by all the fraternity as an excellent master ; the 

 other an intruder — a man of whom few spoke well — and 

 for whom I had the greatest dislike, from the vulgar 

 impertinence of his manners, and the evil reports about his 

 tastes. His position and his chicanery just enabled him 

 to allure the simple and unprincij^led to unite with him in 

 opposition to the man whom he could injure and annoy, 

 but not ruin. Such was his vindictive feeling, that he 

 once said, while eating a sheep's heart for his breakfast, 

 and being complimented by one of his parasites on the 

 keenness of his appetite, that he only wished it was Dicky 

 Costar's — meaning his opponent — he should eat it with 

 much more satisfaction ; and I verily believed him. 



AVith neither of these parties was I, or the coach I 

 drove, at all connected ; and the London proprietor, 

 horsing it all the way to Oxford, he committed everything 

 to my management. I must confess that I was, for the 

 time, highly pleased with the change I had made. It was 

 summer time, and the road, as far as Maidenhead or 

 Henley, was pleasant and populous. Consequently, the 

 retail trade^ was abundant — therefore very profitable to 

 the man at the helm, as Jack would call the coachman. 



1 The term given by the fraternity to short passengers. 



