File:Stage-coach and mail in days of yore - a picturesque history of the coaching age (1903) (14779385681).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

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es at fever heat and dividedeven travellers into parties to such an extentthat an ardent sujoporter of the BufPs wouldalmost rather walk or post than journey by aBlue coach; while a True Blue Tory inn-keeper would deny accommodation to a BuftWhig (supposing in the first instance that theWhig had so far forgotten what was due tohis faction as to seek shelter there) and thinknothing of the custom lost. In I784i the Expedition coach is firstmentioned as running between London andNorwich, by way of Newmarket and Thetford.The expedition consisted in going 108 milesin 17J hours, including stops, or a net runningspeed of about seven miles an hour. Balloon coaches were first heard of in1785, when a plentiful scattering of that nameover the country proved how deep an impressionhad been made upon the public mind by theballoon ascents of Lunardi in the previous year.A stone monument marks the spot beside theCambridge Boad, near Ware, on which thataerial traveller descended after his first flight
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HOIV THE COACHES WERE NAMED 299 in this country ; and the coaches long carried anecho of the wonderment then excited. Coach-i^roprietors had, indeed, by this time begun tosee the commercial advantage of imjiressing thepublic with a sounding name. Already, by longuse and wont, ears had become blunted by thename of the Flying Machines, which had fallenunmeaningly upon several generations accustomedto liberally discount the absurd pretension. Noone at this time, it is safe to say, ever receiveda mental impression of flying when a flyingcoach was named. The name had become a mereconvention. The Balloon was therefore a god-send to coach-proprietors who, in naming theirconveyances after it, succeeded for a while inreviving an outworn figure of speed, and thusagain suggested the idea of their coaches gracefullynavigating the emjiyrean, rather than painfullystaggering along the rutty roads. The Defiance coaches bring us closer tothe great Augustan era of smart coaches andgreat emulation along

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