GENERAL. 413 



quainted with the, practice would ask the porter if 

 the seat was engaged, and if the passenger looked a 

 likely person to give a gratuity to the amount of a 

 shilling, or expressed his willingness to do so, his 

 own coat and that of the porter changed places. 



Another thing the porters used to do was to dry and 

 brush all the mud and dirt off the coachmen and 

 guards' coats, etc., and have their boots and clothes 

 all ready to put on the next time their coach was 

 going out. For this the coachmen and guards paid 

 them. 



Apropos of the boot-cleaning there used to be a 

 coachman who, like many of his order, always wore 

 top-boots ; but his were different in appearance from 

 all the others, as he persisted in having the tops 

 always blacked, as well as the rest of the boots. It 

 happened, however, that the porter at the inn 

 where he stopped for the night, and on whom there- 

 fore devolved the duty of cleaning his boots, had 

 been a gentleman's servant, and in that capacity had 

 had the care of his master's top-boots, and considered 

 himself perfectly acquainted with the correct mode of 

 treating these articles of dress. When, therefore, 

 the coachman's boots came into his hands, conceiving 

 that they had been wrongly treated by some ignorant 

 individual, he set to work vigorously to get all the 

 blacking off the tops, and thus restore the boots to 



