A STAGE-COACH RACE.
Poor Macadam! his honoured dust will soon be forgotten! In cities it is buried, or soon will be, in wood; and few of the millions who glide and slide over the wooden pavement, will think of the "Colossus of Roads," whose dust it covers like a coffin. Our course is no longer "o'er hills and dales, through woods and vales," which the many-handed Macadam made smooth and easy. Our carriage, placed like the toy of a child, goes without horses. The beautiful country—the cheerful "public," with its porch, its honeysuckle and roses—the sign which bade the "weary traveller rest" on the seat beneath the spreading elm;—these are no more!—This is the iron age—fire and steam are as the breath of our nostrils—we speak by the flash of lightning—we have given life to emptiness, and fly upon the wings of a vacuum—our path is through the blasted rock, the cold dark dreary tunnel—through cheerless banks, which shut us from the world like a living grave—on—on—on—we speed! The dying must die! The burning must burn! There is no appeal—no tarrying by the way. Like the whirlwind we are hurried to our end. The screech of women in despair is drowned by the clash, the din, the screech of the "blatant beast," the mad monster which man has laid his finger on, and tamed to his uses.
This is all very fine, and, doubtless, il faut marcher avec son siècle, if we do not wish to be left behind in the race that is before us. Doubtless, too, our children, like calves born by the side of a railroad, will look on these things as a matter of course, and let them pass with high-bred indifference. And if, as most assuredly will be the case, some of these children should become mothers in due course of time, we can fancy them so philosophized by force of habit, so inured to the wholesale smashing and crashing of the human form divine, that, should a door fly open and let an infant drop, the mama will sit quiet till the next station cries Halt! and then merely request that a man and basket be despatched to pick up the pieces left some seven miles off![15]
"Chi lo sa!" as the Neapolitans say in cases of extreme doubt and difficulty; "chi lo sa," say I; and having been born before the earth was swaddled up in iron, or the sea danced over by iron ships, I confess a sneaking fondness for the highways, and byways, and old ways of old England; and, when not pressed for time, I delight in honouring the remains of poor old Macadam.
A fortnight ago, having occasion to visit Somerset, I found myself en route, at Cheltenham—a place, by the way, which always reminds me of miscellaneous articles stored in a second-hand shop; it is sure to come into use once in seven years. There I was for the night, luxuriously lodged in this Anglo-foreign town, this self-styled "queen of watering-places," this city of salt—or salts, as some malicious pluralists will have it—there I was, and long ere morning broke, I had decided upon cutting the rail and coaching it to Bristol; in other words, as time was not an object, I would not go some fifty miles round to save it.
I was soon seated by my old friend, "coachee." Coachee was a character sui generis, of a race which will soon be extinct; I had known him in the "palmy days" of the road, and remembered the time when he, with his pair, was selected to tease and oppose the prettiest four-in-hand that ever trotted fourteen miles an hour.
It was, if I'm not mistaken, in 1832, that "The Exquisite" first started from Exeter to Cheltenham, and weighing the coach, the cattle and coachman together, never was a turn-out more worthy of the title. To oppose this with a pair was a bold conception, but "coachee" was an old stager; "what man dared do" he dared, and did it well. "Strange changes, Mr. Coachee, since you and I first knew each other," said I to my right hand friend, as soon as we had cleared the rattle of the stones. Coachee turned his head slowly round, and looked me full in the face; he drew in such a sigh, and put on such a look of miserable scorn, that I felt for the silent sufferer. Yet was I dumbfounded by his silence; I had looked for the jibes and jests which were wont to put us outsides in a roar,—but to see "coachee" turned into a man of mute sorrow, was a character so new and unnatural, that—extremes will meet—I burst into a hearty fit of laughter.
Coachee attempted to preserve the penseroso, and with ill-feigned gravity tried to reprove me, by saying,—"You may laugh, sir, but it's no joke for us as loses." With what tact I could bring to bear, I revived the memory of former days, the coachman's golden age! I spoke of "the Exquisite," and asked if he did not once beat it with his pair.
"So you've heard tell of that, have you?" And Alexander never chuckled half so much to hear his praises sung, as coachee did at the thoughts of his victory. I told him I had heard of it from others, but never from his own mouth, which was half the battle. There needed but little persuasion to make him tell his own story.
"It's all as true as I am sitting on this here box, and this is how it came to pass. It was one Sunday evening that some of us whips had met to crack a few bottles. 'The Exquisite' had just been put upon the road, and who should be there but Mr. Banks as drove it, and who should be there too but I as was started to oppose it. Well, it so happened I hadn't a single passenger booked inside nor out, for Monday! Well, thinks I, Mr. Banks, if I and my coach can't give you the go-by to-morrow, I don't know inside from out, and so I told him. 'That's your opinion is it, Mr. Bond?' said Mr. Banks, with a smile, and a sniff at a pink in his button-hole. 'Yes, Mr. Banks,' says I; 'and what's more, I'll stick to it, and here's a sovereign to back it.' Will. Meadows, him as used to drive the 'Hi-run-dell,' he thought he'd do me; so he claps down his bit of gold, and the bet was made. There's an end of that, said I, and now, Mr. Banks, let's have a bumper. 'Here's to you, my Exquisite,' says I, as we bobbed and nobbed. 'Here's to you, Mr. H-opposition,' says he, and I hopes you'll tell me the time o' day to-morrow morning.' But he didn't think I should for all that. Well, now, sir, what do you think I should find when I goes the first thing on Monday morning to our office?"