THE LAST DYING SPEECH OF THE COACHMEN FROM BEAM BRIDGE.
The days, nay, the very nights of those who have so long “reined” supreme over the “Nonpareils” and the “Brilliants,” the “Telegraphs” and the “Stars,” the “Magnets” and the “Emeralds,” are nearly at an end, and the final way-bill of the total “Eclipse” is made up. It is positively their last appearance on this stage.
In a few weeks they will be unceremoniously pushed from their boxes by an inanimate thing of vapour and flywheels—by a meddling fellow in a clean white jacket and a face not ditto to match, who, mounted on the engine platform, has for some weeks been flourishing a red hot poker over their heads, in triumph at their discomfiture and downfall; and the turnpike road, shorn of its glories, is left desolate and lone. No more shall the merry rattle of the wheels, as the frisky four-in-hand careers in the morning mist, summon the village beauty from her toilet to the window-pane to catch a passing nod of gallantry; no more shall they loiter by the way to trifle with the pretty coquette in the bar, or light up another kind of flame for the fragrant Havannah fished from amongst the miscellaneous deposits in the depths of the box-coat pockets. True, the race were always a little fond of raillery, and therefore they die by what they love—we speak of course of professional demise—but no doubt they “hold it hard,” after having so often “pulled up” to be thus pulled down from their “high eminences,” and compelled to sink into mere landlords of hotels, farmers, or private gentlemen. Yet so it is. They are “regularly booked.” Their “places are taken” by one who shows no disposition to make room for them; even their coaches are already beginning to crumble into things that have been; and their bodies (we mean their coach bodies) are being seized upon by rural loving folks, for the vulgar purpose of summer-houses. But a few days and they will all vanish—
“And like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a trace behind.”
No, not even a buckle, or an inch of whipcord; and if, some years hence a petrified whipple tree, or the skeleton of a coachman, should be turned up, they will be hung up side by side with rusty armour and the geological gleanings of our antediluvian ancestors.
We cannot part with our civil, obliging, gentlemanly friends of the road without a feeling of regret, and an expression of gratitude for the benefits they have done us. It was pleasant, after a warm breakfast, to remove our heels from the hob, and ensconce oneself by the side of our modern whip—to establish a partnership in his cosy leathern apron—to see him handling his four spirited bays as though his reins were velvet—and having, with a few familiar words and a friendly cigar, drawn the cork from the bottle of his varied information, to learn, as we slapped along at ten miles an hour, whose park it was, stretching away to the left, to listen to his little anecdotes of horse and flesh, and his elucidation of the points of the last Derby. “Peace to the manes and to the names” of our honest coachmen, one and all of them, and of their horses too—we speak of their whippish names, for in the body we hope they may long tarry, and flourish to boot, in other departments of the living.