g8 ON THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



transfers them, by means of the apparatus, to the 

 sorting-carriage as the train passes by. On one 

 occasion the clerk who opened the pouches so re- 

 ceived was surprised to find that, in heu of a mail- 

 bag from Macclesfield, the driver of the cart had 

 carefully packed up the nose -bag containing his 

 horse's feed. Consequently the poor steed lost its 

 supper. 



Winchester is not without its recollections — though 

 they are fast fading away — of the Southampton mail- 

 coaches. There is still preserved a specimen of the 

 numerous copper tokens which at one time were freely 

 issued, perhaps as advertisements. This, one, how- 

 ever, was struck in honour of ' J. Palmer Esqre. . . . 

 as a token of gratitude for benefits received from the 

 establisliment of mail-coaches.' On the obverse is the 

 presentment of a coach and four horses in the act 

 of trotting. The designer must have been a sound 

 political economist, inasmuch as he adopted as the 

 legend the words : ' To Trade — Expedition. To 

 Property — Protection.' 



More interesting still, in the cathedral close, is a 

 moss-grown tombstone inscribed with lines to the 

 memory of the last mail-coach driver on this road. 

 Whether he drove the Eed Piover, I cannot say, but 

 such was the name of the last mail-coach from 

 London to Southampton by the Farnham road. It 

 ran to the old White Hart in Winchester, where I 

 have stayed, but which, like the coach and its driver, 

 belongs alone to the past. 



