An American Four-in-Hand in Britain

by Andrew Carnegie

To waiter: "What time do we start in the morning?"

Waiter: "The omnibus starts at seven, sir."

Shakespearean Student—"Ah! There was the weight which pulled us down. The omnibus! Farewell the neighing steeds, the spirit-stirring horn, whose sweet throat awakened the echoes o'er mountain and glen. Farewell, the Republican banner, and all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious coaching, farewell! The Charioteers' occupation's gone."

First Miltonic Reciter—

"From morn till noon,

From noon till dewy eve,

A summer's day we fell."

Our fall from our own four-in-hand to a public omnibus—oh, what a fall was there, my countrymen!—involved the loss of many a long summer's day to us, for long as they had been the sun ever set too soon.

It was all up after this. Perry and Joe, the coach and the horses, were speeding away by rail to their homes; we were no longer the coaching party, but only ordinary tourists buying our tickets like other people instead of travelling as it were in style upon annual passes. But fate was merciful to us even in this extremity; we were kept from the very lowest stage of human misery by finding ourselves alone and all together in the omnibus; our party just filled it. If it was only a hotel omnibus, as one of the young ladies said, it was all our own yet, as was the MacLean boat at the flood, and the ladies, dear souls, managed to draw some consolation from that.