202 ON THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



a governess meeting her at Sheffield. On returnmg 

 to school after the Christmas holidays, she used to 

 arrive stiff and numbed by being shut up for seven 

 weary hours in a coach, without the chance of a run 

 to stretch her legs or a cup of tea to keep up the 

 circulation ; pierced by the cold of the snow-covered 

 upland, and sickened by the smell of the dirty straw 

 which littered the coach-floor. Such was a young 

 girl's experience of travelling by the mail in the 

 times around which remoteness sheds something of 

 a halo. 



Though, for that matter, it was not schoolgirls 

 alone who suffered. A gentleman of my acquaint- 

 ance travelled up as a schoolboy from Brighton to 

 London by coach about December 21, 1840. Dr. 

 Blimber's young pupil rode outside. He left Brighton 

 at nine or ten o'clock in the morning, and on arriving 

 at the Green Man and Still in Oxford Street, soon 

 after nightfall, was found to be unable to stir a limb 

 from extreme cold, and had to be lifted off the coach, 

 carried indoors, and restored with hot wine and 

 water. 



Apropos of the Sheffield mail-coach drive, I cannot 

 forbear a reminiscence of the Postmistress of Sheffield, 

 who gave up duty in the early seventies. Of course, 

 the headship of the office in Miss Wreaks' time was 

 not the great and responsible post to which it has 

 since grown, but still it was, and always had been, an 

 appointment of importance. 



This lady was a very efficient postmistress, a good 



