[134] Gregory v. Adams, 14 Gray, 242.
[135] Morel v. Mississippi Valley Life Ins. Co., 4 Bush (Ky.), 535.
[136] Prov. Life Ins. & Inv. Co. v. Martin, 32 Md. 310; Trew v. Rw. Pass. Ass. Co., 6 H. & N. 839; Schneider v. Provident Life Ins. Co., 24 Wis. 28; Champlin v. Rw. Pass. Ass. Co., 6 Lansing (N. Y.), 71.
[137] Brown v. Rw. Pass. Ass. Co., 45 Mo. 221; May, p. 657.
[138] May on Insurance, p. 667.
CHAPTER IV.
EVERYTHING MUST BE SOUND, AND EVERY ONE CAREFUL.
The Reason why.—Literature of Stages.—Off on Wheels.—Soundness warranted.—Seats taken.—Fare paid, either First or Last.—Damage to Trunks.—Involuntary Aeronautics.—Passengers injured.—Negligence of Passengers, or of Drivers.—Carriers liable for Smallest Fault; Not Insurers.—Genuine Accidents—Horses left standing.—Driving and upsetting a Friend.—Non-repair of Roads.—Care required.—Tennysonian Stanzas.—Pleasures of the Weed and Rural Life.
The long vacation was rapidly approaching,—that season when the heat having lengthened out the days (as it does everything else), the members of the legal profession abandon rejoinders and demurrers, cast briefs and records, with physic, to the dogs, and, satisfied with bills and conveyances, wander off in search of change in cooling streams and pastures green. In my modest household was eagerly discussed the question, “Whither shall we flee?”
My wife’s step-mother’s brother’s wife’s mother’s aunt, had recently met with a horrible and excruciating death upon a railway car, so my wife had solemnly vowed never again to commit herself to the safe-keeping of a railway company; this, therefore, shut us off from the usual means of exit from our inland city, and yet as “Exeunt omnes,” was the cry, we could not surely stay at home; if we did, we would have to lie low in the kitchen and back premises, that we might appear to others to be away. At last I found that there was still a tumble-down old stage-coach making, with the assistance of two skeleton horses, tri-weekly trips to and from the little Village of Ayr, where we could catch a steamboat and thus do in proper style the Lakes and the St. Lawrence, the Ottawa and the far-famed Saguenay.
When this discovery of mine was divulged at home, great was the rejoicing, loud pæans rose, and for days I was deluged with quotations from all the novelists, from old Fielding to poor Dickens anent stages, and coaches, and stage-coaches. I was told of all the heroes of romance, from Tom Brown back to Tom Jones, who had journeyed thereby; I was confidently informed, on the authority of Mr. William Makepeace Thackeray, that in every coach there is sure to be found an asthmatic old gentleman, a fat man, swelling preternaturally with great coats and snoring indecently, and a lone widow who insists upon all the windows being shut, and fills the vehicle with the fumes of rum which she sucks perpetually from a black bottle. Mr. Thomas Hughes was quoted to prove how much more punctual stages are than railway trains, for he tells of one that went “ten miles an hour, including stoppages, and so punctual that all the road set their watches by her.” The old joke concerning the young man who, on being asked if he had ever been through Euclid, replied, “Yes, I have driven through it on a stage-coach,” was given to me once again as if uttered for the first time; and I was informed that an Indian squaw, the first time she saw a coach pass at a spanking trot, and watched the wheels revolving rapidly, clapped her hands in delight, exclaiming, “Run, little one, run! or the big one will catch you!” The subject gradually became monotonous.