Regard to this is most important. The same animal which becomes a “lawyer,” because “he won’t do no more than we pay him for,” and is often forgotten at the near-side wheel, and is always coming back to you if put on the off-side, or, better still, before the bars, will be straight, steady, and cheerful in his work, with a mouth you might control with a thread.
This is when you have found out the place with which he is pleased and satisfied. Try him on the opposite side, and you will find him laying his whole weight upon the pole, his partner on your fingers.
“Everything in its place and a place for everything” was a maxim constantly preached by the head-master of a certain public school, founded by one Sutton; and the proof of his theory was put to the test by a strange fancy he had taken. He was watching the evolutions of a small Carthusian army, under the command of a colour-sergeant of the Scots Guards, and observed that his first word of command was to “fall in” and “size.” This was quickly done, and the effect so much tickled the doctor, that, on the following Sunday morning, when his catechism class was arranged before him, he thought it would be well to impress a little of the military element into the arrangement of the boys; so he requested the young gentlemen to take their places according to their sizes. Of course they were very obtuse, and could not for the life of them understand his order. Even when he placed them with his own hands, there was a deal of shuffling and confusion to get back to their old places. The doctor, however, had his way, and M or N, who was a short, thick, rosy-cheeked boy, was supplanted by a tall, overgrown, sickly-looking youth of double his stature, and so on according to height, the lowest being in the centre. No. 2 agreed to his “godfather” and “godmother” having given the name of M or N to No. 1; but he could not tell why No. 3, when asked what his sponsors then did for him, preserved an obstinate silence, and, when much pressed, said they were both dead! In fact, arranged as the class then was, if the doctor had asked the questions in High Dutch and expected the answers in Hebrew, he would have got as much information; whereas, if they had kept their own places there would not have been a word in the answers omitted.
[CHAPTER IV.]
Opposition—A quick change—How to do it—Accident to the Yeovil mail—A gallop for our lives—Unconscious passengers—Western whips—Parliamentary obstruction.
Although opposition was fierce, certain rules of etiquette and honour were most rigidly observed on the road, which rendered immunity from accidents much more general than would have been supposed. It was an understood thing that no coach should pass another actually in motion unless invited to do so by the coachman driving the leading coach at the time. The race became much more exciting in cases where there was a little diversity in the roads between two points in the destination.