File:Stage-coach and mail in days of yore - a picturesque history of the coaching age (1903) (14596014457).jpg

Identifier: stagecoachmailin01harp (find matches)
Title: Stage-coach and mail in days of yore : a picturesque history of the coaching age
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Harper, Charles G. (Charles George), 1863-1943
Subjects: Horses Coaching (Transportation) -- History
Publisher: London : Chapman & Hall, limited
Contributing Library: Tufts University
Digitizing Sponsor: Tufts University and the National Science Foundation

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
ty-fourmiles as a days journey for the common stage-waggon, and as the Flying Waggon was advertisedto go at the rate of thirty miles a day, six miles aday was therefore the measure of the superiority inspeed of one over the other. But the accumulatedcontempt of all those social scales for the occupantof the common waggon did not rest there, anymore than it began Avith the passengers of the Machine. Just as the lordly and gentle folkwho had travelled in their own chariots lookeddown even upon the loftiest heights of stage-coachtravelling, so did the poor folk of the waggonsunload their weight of contempt upon those poorestof the poor, who, having nothing to lose, fearedno one—except perha23s the parish constable, aptto be arbitrary and not always able to distinguishbetween a penniless but honest wayfarer and arogue and vagabond. Frequently these travellersin the lowest stratum saw the highwaymanapproach, not merely without fear but with acertain pleasurable anticipation; because your
Text Appearing After Image:
THE STAGE-WAGGONS 123 true knight of the road had a certain generouscode of morals, and while he rohbed the rich,gave to the needy—a thing perhaps counted tohim for righteousness by that recording angelwho effaced the record of Uncle Tobys hastyimprecation with a kindly ol3literating tear. The general increase of heavy traffic soon afterthe middle of the eighteenth century did notescape the notice of those responsible for the con-dition of the roads. Incompetent road-surveyors,ignorant of the science of road construction andemploying unsuitable materials and unskilledlabour, saw the highways they had mended withmud, road-scrapings and gravel continually fallinginto ruts and sloughs, often from twelve to eighteeninches deep. Seeking any cause for this ratherthan their ignorance of the first rudiments ofconstruction, they naturally discovered it in thepassage of the heavily-weighted waggons, andraised an outcry against them accordingly. Toan age that saw no better method of mending th

Note About Images