My readers will not, perhaps, deem it altogether an inappropriate conclusion to this very humble little treatise, if I annex for their amusement, if not for their edification, “The last Dying Speech of the Coachmen from Beambridge,” and some two or three other mementoes of a period and of an institution which have both, alas! long since passed away—and for ever.
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.