ovidence Gazette_ wrote: "We were rattled from Boston to
Providence in four hours and fifty minutes--if any one wants to go
faster he may go to Kentucky and charter a streak of lightning." There
were four rival lines on the Cumberland road,--the National, Good
Intent, Pioneer, and June Bug. Some spirited races the old stage-road
witnessed between the rival lines. The distance from Wheeling to
Cumberland, one hundred and thirty-two miles, was regularly accomplished
in twenty-four hours. No heavy luggage was carried and but nine
passengers; fourteen coaches rolled off together--one was a mail-coach
with a horn. Relays were every ten miles; teams were changed before the
coach ceased rocking; one driver boasted of changing and harnessing his
four horses in four minutes. Lady travellers were quickly thrust in the
open door and their bandboxes after them. Scant time was there for
refreshment, save by uncorking of bottles. The keen test and acute
rivalry between drivers came in the delivery of the President's Message.
Dan Gordon carried the message thirty-two miles in two hours and thirty
minutes, changing horses three times. Bill Noble carried the message
from Wheeling to Hagerstown, a hundred and eighty-five miles, in fifteen
and a half hours.

In 1818 the Eastern Stage Company was chartered in the state of New
Hampshire. The route was this: a stage started from Portsmouth at 9 A.M.;
passengers dined at Topsfield; thence through Danvers and Salem;
back the following day, dining at Newburyport. The capital stock was
four hundred and twenty-five shares at a hundred dollars par. In 1834
the stock was worth two hundred dollars a share. The company owned
several hundred horses. It was on a coach of this line that Henry Clay
rode from Pleasant Street, Salem, to Tremont House, Boston, in exactly
an hour; and on the route extended to Portland, Daniel Webster was
carried at the rate of sixteen English miles an hour from Boston to
Portland to sign the Ashburton Treaty.

The middle of the century saw the beginning of the end of coaching in
all the states that had been colonies. Further west the old stage-coach
had to trundle in order to exist at all: Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, across
the plains, and then over the Rocky Mountains to Salt Lake. The road
from Carson to Plainville gave the crack ride, and the driver wore
yellow kid gloves. The coach known as the Concord wagon, drawn by six
horses, still makes cheerful the out-of-the-way roa