Crying for the Light, Volume 3

They were sitting one morning at breakfast-that pleasantest of meals, unless you have to be up at an unusually early hour to catch the train and be off to London. Modern life is not such an improvement on that of the past as we are apt to fancy. The breakfast was the one meal at which people could meet and discuss matters-private, local, political, literary, or religious, in an informal way. We have no pleasant breakfast in these more ostentatious days, when society is too large to admit of friendship; but it seems to me that in my younger days we got a good deal more pleasure out of life. No wonder, then, that we sigh for the good old times, and long for their revival; that we have Queen Anne furniture, and houses built in what is called the Elizabethan style, and an effort to do away with the rail, and to revive the far-famed coaches with four horses which were the delight of the nation in the Georgian days.

I can call well to mind the time when I held the coachman of a certain Royal Mail, which made its appearance in our benighted village about breakfast-time, to have been one of the most eminent men of the day, and felt at least a foot taller when, as was his wont, he gave me, boy as I was, a friendly nod of recognition. As to seeing the horses changed, that was a scene I would not have missed on any account. How we all stood admiring as the panting steeds, which had galloped gloriously their stage, were led sweating away, and the fresh team, with cloths on, and their hoofs newly-cleaned, and everything about them bright and shiny, took the vacant places! What a pleasure it was to see them as they stood pawing the ground, impatient to be off! How glad we were when the coachman, as he climbed up into his lofty seat, and gathered up the reins in his capacious hand, gave the signal, ‘Let 'em go! ' How beautiful it was to us lads to see the coach bound off like a thing of life, while the guard blew a farewell flourish on his horn, and the horses settled down steadily to their work after a playful flourish or two!