abused, sneered at, laughed at, but not
beaten; finally he gained the ear of William Pitt, who saw that there
was more in the proposed plan than a mere experiment. On the 8th of
August, 1784, Palmer ran his first mail-coach from London to Bristol,
and made the journey in fifteen hours. That was the turning-point.
The old lumbering coaches, the abominable roads, the irresponsible
drivers, the wretched delay, misery, and uncertainty rapidly gave
place to lighter, stronger, and more commodious vehicles, better
horses, more experienced drivers, careful guards, regular stages,
marked by decent inns and comfortable hostelries, and improved roads.
The post-office made a contract with the coaching speculator--a very
safe contract indeed--by which he was to have two and one-half per
cent of the money saved in the conveyance of letters. This would have
yielded twenty thousand pounds a year; so the government broke its
agreement, refused to vote the payment, and compromised with Mr.
Palmer and its own conscience, after the fashion of politicians of
all time, by a grant of fifty thousand pounds.

[Illustration: On The Bath Road]

The Bath road traverses a section of England that is hardly as varied
as would be a longer route from north to south, but, on the whole, it
is characteristically English throughout, and is as good an itinerary
as any by which to make one's first acquaintance with English days
and English ways.

Via Hammersmith, Kew Bridge, Brentford, and Hounslow was our way out
of town, and a more awful, brain-racking, and discouraging start it
would have been impossible to make. London streets are ever difficult
to thread with an automobile, and when the operation is undertaken on
a misty, moisty morning with what the Londoner knows as _grease_
thick under foot and wheel, the process is fraught with the
possibility of adventure.

Out through Piccadilly and Knightsbridge was bad enough, but, by the
time Hammersmith Broadway, its trams and tram-lines and its butchers'
and bakers' and milk carts, was reached and passed, it was as if one
had been trying to claw off a lee shore in a gale, and driver and
passengers alike felt exceeding limp and sticky. The Londoner who
drives an automobile thinks nothing of it, and covers the intervening
miles with a cool clear-headedness that is marvellous. We were new to
automobiling in England, but we were fast becoming acclimated.

On through Chiswick there were still the awful tram-