, and the only trace of him is in the Parish
Register, which tells the simple fact of the death of William Phelps,
of Brighton, Sussex, aged twenty years.

CHAPTER XIV.

OLD COACHING DAYS--STAGE WAGONS AND STAGE COACHES.

Many readers, whose lives carry them back before the "forties," taking
their stand beneath the broad gateway or pebbled court-yard of our old
inns--the Red Lion, the Bull, or the Crown--would require a very slight
effort of memory to recall the exhilarating spectacle of the arrival
and departure of the stage coach of fifty or sixty years ago. Such a
person will once more hear in imagination the cheery coach horn at the
town's end; and, watching for only a minute, he knows what to
expect--yes, there around that critical corner at the Cross, come the
steaming leaders, then a handful of reins, the portly form of the
coachman, and then the huge embodiment of civilization itself comes
{143} swinging round the corner like a thing of life! Clattering up
the High Street! the driver pulls them up promptly at the Lion, or the
Bull, and performs that classic feat of swinging his lusty eighteen
stone from the box seat with an easy grace which is the envy of every
stable boy in the town! He sees once more the busy scene of bustle and
animation as the steaming horses are replaced by other sleek animals
fresh from the stables, and the old coach rolls on for another stage of
the journey.

This, the ideal view of locomotion in the palmy days of stage-coaching,
was really an evolution from something much less smart and efficient.
Of that interesting evolution of the older locomotion, our old town, by
the necessity of the route, saw most of the varied phases, for during
many years of the century coaches rattled through our streets with
kings, queens and princes, duellists and prize-fighters, daring
highwaymen and Bow Street runners, romantic lovers off to Gretna Green,
and School boys--poor little Nicklebies off to a Squeers'
Academy--jostling inside the body of the lumbering coach, or dangling
their legs from the roof as outsiders!

In glancing at the salient points of this evolution as it passed before
the eyes of our grandfathers, it may be necessary to go back to the
"composite" order of locomotion with the mixture of goods and passenger
traffic.

A journey to London, or a distant town, for the purpose of trade or a
visit, was a tedious experience full of discomfort. Following the
sturdy caravan of