, while the other passengers, already
in their places, were being searched.

There is another story which may be worth repeating. A hungry passenger
had just commenced to taste the quality of a stewed fowl when he was
peremptorily ordered by the guard to take his place. Unwilling to lose
either his meal or his passage, he hastily rolled the fowl in his
handkerchief, and mounted the coach. But the landlord, unused to such
liberties, was soon after him with the ravished dish. The coach was
already on the move, and the only revenge left to the landlord was to
call out jeeringly to the passenger, "Won't you have the gravy, sir?"
The other passengers had a laugh at the expense of their companion; but
we know that a hungry man is a tenacious man, and a man with a full
stomach can afford to laugh. At any rate the proverb says, "Who laughs
last laughs best."

The differences arising between passengers and the landlords at the
stopping-places were sometimes, however, of a much more prosaic and
solemn character. Charles Lamb has given us such a scene. "I was
travelling," he says, "in a stage-coach with three male Quakers,
buttoned up in the straitest nonconformity of their sect. We stopped to
bait at Andover, where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was
set before us. My friends confined themselves to the tea-table. I in my
way took supper. When the landlady brought in the bill, the eldest of my
companions discovered that she had charged for both meals. This was
resisted. Mine hostess was very clamorous and positive. Some mild
arguments were used on the part of the Quakers, for which the heated
mind of the good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The guard
came in with his usual peremptory notice. The Quakers pulled out their
money and formally tendered it--so much for tea--I, in humble situation,
tendering mine, for the supper which I had taken. She would not relax in
her demand. So they all three quietly put up their silver, as did
myself, and marched out of the room, the eldest and gravest going first,
with myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do better than
follow the example of such grave and warrantable personages. We got in.
The steps went up. The coach drove off. The murmurs of mine hostess, not
very indistinctly or ambiguously pronounced, became after a time
inaudible, and now my conscience, which the whimsical scene had for a
while suspended, beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in t