“Your papa would not trust your life in the stage. It is a very unsafe and improper conveyance for young ladies. Many have been the accidents, many the cripples made by accidents in those vehicles. As soon as your papa can go, you may be sure he will go or send for you.”
There was one curious and most depressing, even appalling, condition of stage-coach travel. It seemed to matter little how long was your journey, nor where you were going, nor whence you started, your coach always started before daybreak. You had to rise in the dark, dress in the dark most feebly illumined, eat a hurriedly prepared breakfast in the dark, and start out in the blackness of night or the depressing chill of early morning. We read that the greatest number of deaths take place in the early morning, at daybreak, and it is not surprising, since it is the time, of all the hours of the day, when earth offers the least to the human soul to tempt it to remain here. It is no unusual thing to read in travellers’ accounts of journeys by stage-coach, of riding ten miles on the coach, and then—breakfasting. We cannot wonder, therefore, at the records of incessant dram-drinking during coach travel which we always find in any minute accounts.
An English eye-witness, Captain Basil Hall, thus described the beginning of a trip from Providence to Hartford in October, 1829:—
“The nominal hour of starting was five in the morning; but as everything in America comes sooner than one expects, a great tall man walked into the room at ten minutes before four o’clock to say it wanted half an hour of five: and presently we heard the rumbling of the stage coming to the door upwards of thirty minutes before the time specified. Fortunately there were only five passengers, so we had plenty of room; and as the morning was fine we might have enjoyed the journey much, had we not been compelled to start so miserably early. At the village of Windham we dined in a cheerful sunny parlour on a neatly dressed repast excellent in every way, and with very pleasant chatty company.”
So forehanded were American coach-agents and coach-drivers that such premature starts were not infrequent. Many a time an indignant passenger, on time, but left behind, was sent off after the coach in a chaise with a swift horse at full gallop.
Josiah Quincy tells thus of a trip on the Lancaster road during the winter of 1826:—
“At three o’clock this morning the light of a candle under the door and a rousing knock told me that it was time to depart, and shortly after I left Philadelphia by the Lancaster stage, otherwise a vast illimitable wagon, capable of holding some sixteen passengers with decent comfort to themselves, and actually encumbered with some dozen more. After riding till eight o’clock we reached the breakfast house, where we partook of a good meal.”
“A Wet Start at Daybreak.”
Longfellow wrote of his first acquaintance, in the year 1840, with the Wayside Inn, otherwise Howe’s Tavern, at Sudbury, Massachusetts: “The stage left Boston about three o’clock in the morning, reaching the Sudbury Tavern for breakfast, a considerable portion of the route being travelled in total darkness, and without your having the least idea who your companion might be.”