Related article: perhaps minor matters we are equally in the dark. I have at different times come across seven or eight very old coachmen, men who drove in the *• twenties " and ** thirties" and have cross-exam- ined them on matters of procedure, the cross-examination being based on the directions given to me by comparatively modern professors. All our text books tell us to keep our left hand fairly high — practice does not always accord with pre- cept. The old fellows, however, have told me that they let their left hand lie on their lap, driving with the straight arm as recom- mended by Colonel Edward Cor- bett in his book •• An Old Coach- man's Chatter." When these ancient professors were asked about shortening any one rein or I90I.] OLD TIMB COACH DRIVING. 343 all four of them, they invariably replied that ihere was one way only that they knew of, and that v^as by pulling back the reins from behind the left hand. This plan, however, is nowadays voted bad form, the proper way to shorten the reins, according to modern notions, in the event of their Avanting shortening which some people Sporanox Price say should never be the case, being to push them Cheap Sporanox back "with'the right hand in front of the left, the only exception being that it is permissible to pull them all back from behind; while it is also allowable to pull back the off- "wheel rein, the bottom of the four, in the same way. Who first made the pushing back of the reins de tigueur^ or who first invented the loop in pointing the leaders to turn a corner, cannot be discovered. The old coachmen neither short- ened their reins nor turned a corner in the modern fashion, for we hear nothing of the loop until long after "Nimrod's" time, and he wrote in the ** thirties." The amateur driving question came up in the old days as it does now, for like Mr. Green, sen., the father of Verdant Green, some of the passengers of old did not believe in being driven by the Mr. **Four-in-hand*Foobroke**of the day. So long ago as 1798 there appear to have been some ambitious amateurs, as in that year the coachman and guard of the Wisbech mail Buy Sporanox Online - coach were convicted at the Cambridge Quarter Sessions for having per- mitted *' a gentleman of the University of Cambridge " to ** drive the carriage." This un- dergraduate, however, does not appear to have possessed the skill of Mr. Stephenson, the Cam- bridge graduate who afterwards drove on the Brighton road, for the Wisbech mail was overturned, and a woman was much hurt; but on all expenses being paid, and reparation being made to the injured passenger, the coachman and guard were merely repri- manded and discharged. In 1836 the Liverpool and Hull coach had a narrow Sporanox Online escape from coming to grief at the hands of an amateur, who Order Sporanox was making his first essay at driving a team. One of the pro- prietors, Mr. Charles Wardell, was on the box seat to look Sporanox Cost out for squalls, and when going down Welton Hill, on which there is an exceedingly awkward turn, cautioned his companion how to make the turn, and to be careful ; but the amateur managed to bring the leaders' heads up against the coach, so off jumped Mr. Wardell to run to the leaders' heads, and so save a capsize ; but one of the horses knocked him down, and he broke his leg. It was common enough for amateurs to drive at one time, as the Duke of Beaufort, Captain Malet, Mr. Birch Reynardson, Sporanox Buy Sporanox Tablets ** Sporanox 100mg Nimrod," and others, tell us, while we know that such coach- men as a former Sir Watkin Wynn, Lord Tollemache, Lord Kenyon, and a host of other re- nowned amateurs, were accus- tomed to put on their driving gloves. For any one, however, except the proper coachman to drive, at least without the leave of the proprietor, was a breach of regulations. Consequently, men like Byers, the ** arch -informer," were on the look-out for these matters, and laid informations, receiving half the penalty should conviction follow. The coachmen, however, were equal to the occa- sion, for, if they found the in- former about, they induced some friend to lay similar information at another office, and they some- how managed that the summons should take precedence of that first issued. The coachman would 344 BAILY S MAGAZINE. IMat plead guilty to the facts alleged against him : his friend, as in- former, would take half the penalty, which he would promptly divide with the coachman, who thereupon escaped with a miti- gated penalty, and what is more to the purpose, kept the pro- fessional informer out of his share of the plunder. Whatever merits the old coach- man may have possessed, careful- ness does not invariably appear to have been one of them, for there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of accidents attributed to carelessness and racing. This was so as long ago as the end of the eighteenth century, when a passenger who could drive wrote a letter to the press pointing out that numbers of people were de- terred from riding on or in the mail coaches, and not without reason, for he averred that eight out of ten accidents which hap- pened were caused by the coach- Buy Sporanox man's negligence, and he then proceeded to give an instance. At about one o'clock in the morn- ing the Liverpool mail was run- ning between Hockliffe and Dun- stable. The Chester Sporanox 200 Mg and Leeds coaches were in front, and were travelling at about seven miles an hour ; Purchase Sporanox but this rate did not satisfy the coachman of the Liverpool mail. So he put on steam, allowed his horses to gallop so as to pass the two others, and though it was moonlight, drove into a ditch and upset the coach. The writer of the letter was a passenger in the Chester Sporanox Pulse coach, saw all that happened, and helped to set the Liverpool coach right side up, receiving for his pains some abusive language. If these accidents had happened when even the best of amateur coach- men were driving, what would people have said } In connection with the many accidents which occurred, another letter- writer, after remarking upon