Chapter 3

CHAPTER III.

MR. CROFTANGRY, INTER ALIA, REVISITS GLENTANNER.

Then sing of stage-coaches,
And fear no reproaches
For riding in one;
But daily be jogging,
Whilst, whistling and flogging,
Whilst, whistling and flogging,
The coachman drives on. FARQUHAR.

Disguised in a grey surtout which had seen service, a white
castor on my head, and a stout Indian cane in my hand, the next
week saw me on the top of a mail-coach driving to the westward.

I like mail-coaches, and I hate them. I like them for my
convenience; but I detest them for setting the whole world a-
gadding, instead of sitting quietly still minding their own
business, and preserving the stamp of originality of character
which nature or education may have impressed on them. Off they
go, jingling against each other in the rattling vehicle till they
have no more variety of stamp in them than so many smooth
shillings--the same even in their Welsh wigs and greatcoats, each
without more individuality than belongs to a partner of the
company, as the waiter calls them, of the North Coach.

Worthy Mr. Piper, best of contractors who ever furnished four
frampal jades for public use, I bless you when I set out on a
journey myself; the neat coaches under your contract render the
intercourse, from Johnnie Groat's House to Ladykirk and Cornhill
Bridge, safe, pleasant, and cheap. But, Mr. Piper, you who are a
shrewd arithmetician, did it never occur to you to calculate how
many fools' heads, which might have produced an idea or two in
the year, if suffered to remain in quiet, get effectually addled
by jolting to and fro in these flying chariots of yours; how many
decent countrymen become conceited bumpkins after a cattle-show
dinner in the capital, which they could not have attended save
for your means; how many decent country parsons return critics
and spouters, by way of importing the newest taste from
Edinburgh? And how will your conscience answer one day for
carrying so many bonny lasses to barter modesty for conceit and
levity at the metropolitan Vanity Fair?

Consider, too, the low rate to which you reduce human intellect.
I do not believe your habitual customers have their ideas more
enlarged than one of your coach-horses. They KNOWS the road,
like the English postilion, and they know nothing besides. They
date, like the carriers at Gadshill, from the death of Robin
Ostler; [See Act II. Scene 1 of the First Part of Shakespeare's
Henry IV.] the succession of guards forms a dynasty in their
eyes; coachmen are their ministers of state; and an upset is to
them a greater incident than a change of administration. Their
only point of interest on the road is to save the time, and see
whether the