o cottages. The horses were fine animals, beautifully kept;
but the habit of hanging about public-houses to attend to them was not
good for the ostlers and people concerned. About fifteen coaches came
through this place in the morning, and their fellows in the evening, each
proprietor keeping two coaches, starting from the two opposite ends at
the same time. There was the Mail, the Telegraph, the Independent, the
Red Rover, the Hirondelle, all London coaches, besides the Oxford coach
and some that only ran between Winchester and Southampton. The driver
and owner of one, Mason's coach, was only a few years ago living here.
When people intended to go on a journey, they booked their places a day
or two beforehand, but for short journeys or going into Winchester they
would watch for a vacant space in a coach as it passed by.

It is odd to look back at an old article in a quarterly review describing
coach travelling as something so swift and complete that it could not be
surpassed in its perfection. Yet accidents with the spirited horses and
rapid driving were not uncommon, and a fall from an overloaded coach was
a dangerous thing.

When the mail went by coach the sending of letters and parcels could not
but be expensive. Heavy goods travelled by waggon, barge, or ship,
parcels went by carriers or by coaches, and nothing could be posted but
what was quite light. So postage was very expensive, and it is strange
to look back on the regulations connected with it. Our readers under
forty years old will hardly believe the rates that were paid for postage,
varying according to distance. There was a company in London that
carried letters from one part of that town to another for twopence
apiece, and this was the cheapest post in England. A letter from London
to Otterbourne cost eightpence, and one from Winchester either threepence
or fourpence, one from Devonshire elevenpence, and this was paid not by
the sender, but by the receiver. It was reckoned impolite to prepay a
letter. Moreover, the letter had to be on a single sheet. The sheet
might be of any size that could be had, but it must be only one. A small
sheet enclosed within another, or the lightest thing, such as a lock of
hair or a feather, made it a double letter, for which double postage had
to be given. The usual custom was to write on quarto sheets twice the
size of what is used now, and, after filling three sides, to fold the
fourth, leaving a space for t