326 HIGHWAYS AND HORSES. 



any prefatory remark on the subject whatever, said : 

 " Were you very much hurt, then, by being upset 

 out of that gig ? " 



" No, thank God ! " said his companion, "■ for I 

 never was upset out of one." 



" What," repHed Mytton, " never upset out of a gig ? 



What a d slow-coach you must have been all your 



life ! " and running his wheel up the bank, over they 

 both went, fortunately without either being much hurt. 

 But Nimrod says that Mytton was really no coachman, 

 he knew nothing of the actual science of driving four 

 horses ; he would, however, now and then drive the 

 Holyhead mail, but when he did so, he never attempted 

 any larks. 



Forty years ago the late Sir Henry Peyton, a 

 member of the Four-in-Hand Club, a famous whip in 

 those days, elicited from Will Bowers, the well-known 

 Oxford coachman, the following clear and conclusive 

 criticism on the difference between locomotion by rail 

 and by road : 



"Why, you see. Sir Henry," said Bowers, "if an 

 accident happens to a coach, why, there you are ; but if 

 an accident happens to a train, where are you } " 



In the early days of railroad travelling, even the 

 Four-in-Hand Club appeared to languish, and there were 

 many men of that generation who predicted with great 

 emphasis that the days of all coach driving were doomed; 

 but that these birds of ill-omen were wrong, is proved 

 by the flourishing condition of the Four-in-Hand and 

 Coaching Clubs, not to mention the revival coaches, 

 which, I think, is the best term to apply to those 

 coaches which have of late years been put on the road 

 during summer. At all the great race-meetings, too, such 

 as Epsom, Ascot, Goodwood, and Sandown, the dis- 



