190 THE CO ACHING AGE. 



department of Messrs. Chaplin and Home's railway- 

 carrying business, is very different from what it wa& 

 in the little narrow lane in the coaching-days. The 

 City, indeed, is vastly altered in many places from 

 what it was in those days, and many of the coach- 

 offices, where a considerable business was done, were 

 situated in narrow by-streets or lanes. 



Apropos of this, there used to be a story told of a 

 medical man of considerable practice in the City 

 requiring a coachman thoroughly acquainted with 

 the geography of the City to drive him on his 

 rounds to see his patients. An applicant for the 

 situation called upon the doctor with a view to being 

 engaged. The first thing the doctor d^d was to put 

 the man through a course of examination on his 

 geographical knowledge, in which, according to his 

 own notion, the man was perfect, saying that he knew 

 every place in the City well, and that the doctor 

 could not name one with which he was unac- 

 quainted. Not satisfied with this confident and 

 sweeping assertion, the doctor proceeded to test 

 the accuracy and truth of :the man's statements in 

 this way : 



' Do you know the Wonderful Bird, Boy Lane,^ 

 Timber Street, Eeasonable Place V 



This was rather too much for the man, who, after 

 some consideration, was reluctantly obliged to admit 



