Here are some of the coaching miseries experienced by one who travelled before steam had taken the place of good horseflesh, and, sooth to say, there is not much in the nature of romantic glamour attaching to them:—
Misery number one. Although your place has been contingently secured some days before, and although you have risen with the lark, yet you see the ponderous vehicle arrive full. And this, not unlikely, more than once.
2. At the end of a stage, beholding the four panting, reeking, foaming animals which have dragged you twelve miles, and the stiff, galled, scraggy relay, crawling and limping out of the yard.
3. Being politely requested, at the foot of a tremendous hill, to ease the horses. Mackintoshes, vulcanized india-rubber, gutta-percha, and gossamer dust-coats unknown then.
4. An outside passenger, resolving to endure no longer “the pelting of the pitiless storm,” takes refuge, to your consternation, inside; together with his dripping hat, saturated cloak, and soaked umbrella.
5. Set down with a promiscuous party to a meal bearing no resemblance to that of a good hotel, excepting in the charge; and no time allowed in which to enjoy it.
6. Closely packed in a box, “cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in,” with five companions morally or physically obnoxious, for two or three comfortless days and nights.
7. During a halt overhearing the coarse language of the ostlers and the tipplers of the roadside pot-house: and besieged with beggars exposing their horrible mutilations.
8. Roused from your fitful nocturnal slumber by the horn or bugle; the lashing and cracking of whips; the noisy arrivals at turnpike gates, or by a search for parcels (which, after all, are not there) under your seat: to say nothing of solicitous drivers who pester you with their entirely uncalled-for attentions.
9. Discovering, at a diverging-point in your journey, that the “Tally-ho” coach runs only every other day or so, or that it has been finally stopped.