EXPRESSES PAST AND PRESENT. 293 



thirty minutes for breakfast at Buckden, and different 

 names appear in some instances in the up-bill. 

 These allowances of half an hour each for supper and 

 breakfast are more liberal than those accorded to the 

 passengers on the day-coach from London to Man- 

 chester, who only got twenty minutes for their break- 

 fast, and the same time for their dinner ; but then, in 

 order to get through the long distance in the day, it 

 was absolutely necessary to economize time as much 

 as possible, and only devote to stoppages for any 

 purpose whatever so much as was indispensable. 



Of course, the shorter the time allowed for meals 

 the better for the innkeepers. Twenty minutes to 

 get off some of your wraps, or at all events warm 

 your fingers a little in very cold weather, so as 

 to enable you to hold a knife and fork or spoon, and 

 some time to wrap yourself up again, left little to 

 devote to the actual consumption of the eatables and 

 drinkables ; and he must have been a very quick 

 feeder who could get half-a-crown or three-and- 

 sixpence-worth out of the meal. Anyone starting 

 with a plate of hot soup — if there was such a thing 

 on the table — ^would inevitably be out of the hunt 

 altogether. 



Eailways, it is true, only allow ''about ten minutes 

 at refreshment stations ; but then you go such long 

 distances in so short a time, that even in a journey 



