An Old Coachman's Chatter, with Some Practical Remarks on Driving

Well, the ideal coachman is now on his box, and I hope with straight knees, feet close together, and well out in front of him, shoulders well thrown back, and arms hanging natur...

And now, ladies and gentlemen, "I leave you here," and trust I have given you no cause for complaint on the score of either civility or politeness to my passengers. I fear that...

By the beginning of the new century the mail coach system appears to have begun to settle into its place pretty well. Mr. Vidler had the contract for the coaches, which he conti...

Those who aspire to distinction on the coach box now-a-days, are deprived of two great helps, perhaps the two greatest helps, which were enjoyed by their predecessors--I mean ex...

Coachmen, as they used to be, are now nearly, or quite, lost to sight, and it is difficult to describe them. Most of the descriptions given of them have been, more or less, cari...

I have sometimes been asked, when I was driving coaches, whether I had ever had an accident, to which I was able to reply for a good many years, that, though I had been very nea...

A book about coaching would be very incomplete without touching on the subject of horses, as they were like the main spring of a watch: the coach could not go without them.

It is not within the scope of a book on coaching to go behind the time when mail bags were conveyed on wheels, and the coaches became public conveyances, carrying passengers as...

I had intended to conclude my remarks on the subject of the mail coaches, but have been induced to invest in another chapter by an ingenious proposal which was brought to the no...

I have never been very much of a tandem driver, for having been entered upon stage coaches, and driven them for a good many hundred miles before getting hold of a tandem, I must...

I have endeavoured to show in a previous chapter, on the subject of coachmen, with what rapidity the carrying business of the country increased and multiplied, but, perhaps, thi...

So much has already been written about the Brighton road that, perhaps, it may seem presumptuous in me to re-open the subject, but as I have noticed the Birmingham road, I will...

In the last chapter the reader was casually introduced to a convict ship, and as it is now about half a century since they became obsolete, it may not be altogether without inte...

Though it is rather a singular coincidence that my earliest experiences should be laid in the same neighbourhood as has been more than once mentioned by the late Mr. Birch Reyna...

How vividly do these words recall the many wet and snowy journeys which I have experienced, both as coachman and passenger, in years gone by, and, strange as it may appear to mo...

There was a great character who drove out of Machynlleth at that time. His name was David Lloyd, and he worked the mail between that place and Dolgelly round by Towyn and the co...

As the railways are dependent upon the excellence of the permanent way for the pace at which they can travel, so were coaches indebted to the good state of the roads for the gre...

It may seem strange to those who have never had any experience of road travelling, that the memory of hours spent in journeys, when the passengers by public conveyances had only...

Whether these few pages will have the former effect I know not, but if they only help to dispel _ennui_ for an hour or two, they will not have been written quite in vain, and, a...

The guard of the olden day was generally exceedingly quick in putting on the skid and taking it off, which with fast coaches travelling hilly roads, before the patent break was...

There can be but few left now who are able to call to mind that the style of coaches which now run in the summer months from the "White Horse Cellars," and traverse the differen...

Many guards on the day coaches carried key bugles, on which some of them were able to play exceedingly well, and helped to while away many a half hour on the journey; but on the...

Having indicated to some extent the sources from which the great demand for coachmen were supplied, I will venture to dwell, for a moment, and not without feelings of regret, on...

I have sometimes been asked if I did not find it very monotonous to be always travelling the same road day after day. Some might have found it so, but I never did. There was nev...