Stagecoach Days

STAGECOACH DAYS.
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Story of a Trip From Portsmouth to London In 1780.

There are men and women - and they are not always the old - who deplore the breathless pace of the age. In stagecoach days, they tell us, life was a different thing. People journeyed through the years leisurely then; existence had a flavor. A century ago a journey meant fellowship and merry adventures and a comfortable enjoyment of the beauties of the landscape.

All this may be so, but a traveler who made the journey from Portsmouth to London In 1780 shows that even stagecoach days had their shadows.

"The getting up on the coach alone was at the risk of one's life," he wrote, "and when I was up I had nothing to hold on to except a little handle at the side. The moment we set off I thought I saw certain death before me. The machine rolled with tremendous rapidity over the stones and every minute seemed to fly in the air, so that it appeared to me a complete miracle that we stuck to the coach at all.

"This continual fear of death at last became insupportable to me, and I carefully crept along the top of the coach and ensconced myself in the basket behind.

"On a sudden the coach proceeded at a rapid rate down a hill. All the boxes, iron nailed and copper fastened, began to dance around me, and every moment I received such violent blow that I thought my last hour had come. Shaken to pieces, bleeding and sore, I crept back to my former position. And it rained incessantly, and as before we were covered with dust so now we were soaked with rain.

"My neighbor every now and then fell asleep and when in this state perpetually rolled and jolted against me with the whole weight of his body, more than once nearly pushing me from the seat to which I clung with the last strength of despair. I looked and certainly felt like a crazy fool when I arrived in London."

The letter is realistic. It is possible that twentieth century traveling, although unromantic, has its compensations after all. – Youth’s Companion