Chapter 3 - Page 2

coach keeps the hour. This is surely a miserable
degradation of human intellect. Take my advice, my good sir, and
disinterestedly contrive that once or twice a quarter your most
dexterous whip shall overturn a coachful of these superfluous
travellers, IN TERROREM to those who, as Horace says, "delight in
the dust raised by your chariots."

Your current and customary mail-coach passenger, too, gets
abominably selfish, schemes successfully for the best seat, the
freshest egg, the right cut of the sirloin. The mode of
travelling is death to all the courtesies and kindnesses of life,
and goes a great way to demoralize the character, and cause it to
retrograde to barbarism. You allow us excellent dinners, but
only twenty minutes to eat them. And what is the consequence?
Bashful beauty sits on the one side of us, timid childhood on the
other; respectable, yet somewhat feeble, old age is placed on our
front; and all require those acts of politeness which ought to
put every degree upon a level at the convivial board. But have
we time--we the strong and active of the party--to perform the
duties of the table to the more retired and bashful, to whom
these little attentions are due? The lady should be pressed to
her chicken, the old man helped to his favourite and tender
slice, the child to his tart. But not a fraction of a minute
have we to bestow on any other person than ourselves; and the
PRUT-PRUT--TUT-TUT of the guard's discordant note summons us to
the coach, the weaker party having gone without their dinner, and
the able-bodied and active threatened with indigestion, from
having swallowed victuals like a Lei'stershire clown bolting
bacon.

On the memorable occasion I am speaking of I lost my breakfast,
sheerly from obeying the commands of a respectable-looking old
lady, who once required me to ring the bell, and another time to
help the tea-kettle. I have some reason to think she was
literally an OLD-STAGER, who laughed in her sleeve at my
complaisance; so that I have sworn in my secret soul revenge upon
her sex, and all such errant damsels of whatever age and degree
whom I may encounter in my travels. I mean all this without the
least ill-will to my friend the contractor, who, I think, has
approached as near as any one is like to do towards accomplishing
the modest wish cf the Amatus and Amata of the Peri Bathous,--

"Ye gods, annihilate but time and space,
And make two lovers happy."

I intend to give Mr. P. his full revenge when I come to discuss
the more recent enormity of steamboats; meanwhile, I shall only
say of both these modes of conveyance, that--

"There is no living with them or without them."

I am, perhaps, more critical