one had as yet dreamed of the staircase. Other curious points will be noticed by the observant, and among them the fact that ’buses then had doors. The present historian vividly recollects a door being part of the equipment of every ’bus, and of the full-flavoured odour of what Mr. W. S. Gilbert calls ‘damp straw and squalid hay’ which assailed the nostrils of the ‘insides’ when that door was shut; but in what particular year did the door vanish altogether? Alas! the straw, with the door, is gone for evermore, and passengers no longer lose their small change in it to the great gain of the conductor, who, by the way, used to be called ‘the cad,’ even although he commonly wore a ‘top hat’ and a frock coat, as per the picture. The word ‘cad’ has since then acquired a much more offensive meaning, and if you addressed a conductor by that name nowadays, he would probably express a desire to punch your head.
The hideous statue of the Duke and his charger ‘Copenhagen,’ which the French said ‘avenged Waterloo,’ was removed to Aldershot in 1884, when the alterations were made at Hyde Park Corner.
VII
And now we come to the first toll-gate, which, removed to this spot in 1825, opposite where the Alexandra Hotel now stands, stood here until 1854.
There were many troublesome survivals in 1837 which have long since been swept away. Toll-gates,
THE PIKEMEN
