ation; but amateur drivers of stage coaches
I had always a prejudice against: let gentlemen keep their own
four-in-hands, and upset themselves and families, as they have an
undeniable right to do--but not the public. I looked at the first
speaker; at his pea-jacket, that is, which was all I could see of him:
Oxford decidedly. His cigar was Oxford too, by the villanous smell
of it. He took the coachman's implied distrust of his professional
experience good-humouredly enough, proffered him his cigar-case, and
entered into a discussion on the near leader's moral and physical
qualities. "I'll trouble you for a light, if you please," said I. He
turned round, we stuck the ends of our cigars together, and puffed into
each other's faces for about a minute (my cigars were dampish), as grave
as North American Indians. "Thank you," said I, as the interesting
ceremony was concluded, and our acquaintance begun. We got into
conversation, when it appeared that he too was bound for the
undiscovered shores of Glyndewi, and that we were therefore likely to be
companions for the next three months. He was an off-hand, good-humoured
fellow; drank brandy-and-water, treated the coachman, and professed an
acquaintance with bar-maids in general, and pretty ones in particular,
on our line of road. He was going up for a class, he supposed, he said;
the governor had taken a "second below the line" himself, and insisted
upon his emulating the paternal distinction; d----d nonsense, he said,
in his opinion: except that the governor had a couple of harriers with
Greek names, he did not see that his classics were of any use to him;
and no doubt but that Hylax and Phryne would run just as well if they
had been called Stormer and Merry Lass. However, he must rub up all his
old Eton books this "long," and get old Hanmer to lay it on thick. Such
was Mr Branling of Brazen-nose.

At Shrewsbury, we were saluted with the intelligence, "Coach dines here,
gentlemen." We found a couple of fowls that the coach might probably
have dined upon, and digested with other articles--in the hind boot; to
human stomachs they seemed impracticable. We employed the allotted ten
minutes upon a leg of mutton, and ascended again to our stations on the
roof; and here was an addition to our party. Externally, it consisted
of a mackintosh and a fur cap: in the very short interval between the
turned-down flap of the one and the turned-up collar of the other, were
a pair of grey glass