NE SUTOR ULTRA CREPIDAM. 69 



pillions are gone by, and has most unquestionably a 

 right to break his neck if he pleases : but if I am 

 driven by another, he certainly has no right to break 

 mine. Poor Mytton thought otherwise ; but it is not 

 every one who charges gates in tandems. In these 

 money-saving days, where, so long as there are six 

 inches square of room in a vehicle, some one must be 

 accommodated, sundry great and little necks are, in 

 private as well as public carriages, entrusted to the 

 care of some one. Surely then this some one, be it 

 papa or his subordinate, ought to know not merely 

 something, but all about his undertaking. Now it 

 most unfortunately happens for the drived, that the 

 driver almost universally considers that he does know 

 all about it ; and hence the frequent occasions on 

 which Mr. Swiggins, Mrs. Swiggins, a friend or two, 

 and half-a-dozen little Swigginses, find themselves 

 on the road, but not in the carriage ; and all pro- 

 bably because the Elder Junior Mr. Swiggins would, 

 as he termed it, "handle the ribbons," an occu- 

 pation for which I am willing to give him credit 

 in another meaning of the expression to be fully 

 competent to, but handling silk ribbons and leather 

 ones are not quite the same thing. The letting his 

 ribbon at home get under his foot, and his ribbon 

 abroad get under his horse's tail, may probably lead 

 to very different results ; and the " Well, I never," 

 ejaculated by a pretty shop-girl at Mr. Swiggins's 

 inadvertence in the shop, is a somewhat different hint 

 to that of a pair of horses' heels Avithin an inch of his 

 nose at the inadvertence of Mr. Swiggins in his 

 coachman's seat. 



Monomania has become, I believe, the ruling term 

 to designate a person being sane on all points but 



F 3 



