r some general impression of the
way people lived together in those days, and especially of the
relations of the rich and poor to one another, perhaps I cannot do
better than to compare society as it then was to a prodigious coach
which the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged toilsomely
along a very hilly and sandy road. The driver was hunger, and
permitted no lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow.
Despite the difficulty of drawing the coach at all along so hard a
road, the top was covered with passengers who never got down, even at
the steepest ascents. These seats on top were very breezy and
comfortable. Well up out of the dust, their occupants could enjoy the
scenery at their leisure, or critically discuss the merits of the
straining team. Naturally such places were in great demand and the
competition for them was keen, every one seeking as the first end in
life to secure a seat on the coach for himself and to leave it to his
child after him. By the rule of the coach a man could leave his seat
to whom he wished, but on the other hand there were many accidents by
which it might at any time be wholly lost. For all that they were so
easy, the seats were very insecure, and at every sudden jolt of the
coach persons were slipping out of them and falling to the ground,
where they were instantly compelled to take hold of the rope and help
to drag the coach on which they had before ridden so pleasantly. It
was naturally regarded as a terrible misfortune to lose one's seat,
and the apprehension that this might happen to them or their friends
was a constant cloud upon the happiness of those who rode.

But did they think only of themselves? you ask. Was not their very
luxury rendered intolerable to them by comparison with the lot of
their brothers and sisters in the harness, and the knowledge that
their own weight added to their toil? Had they no compassion for
fellow beings from whom fortune only distinguished them? Oh, yes;
commiseration was frequently expressed by those who rode for those who
had to pull the coach, especially when the vehicle came to a bad place
in the road, as it was constantly doing, or to a particularly steep
hill. At such times, the desperate straining of the team, their
agonized leaping and plunging under the pitiless lashing of hunger,
the many who fainted at the rope and were trampled in the mire, made a
very distressing spectacle, which often called forth highly creditable
d