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The village of Whitnash, within twenty minutes' walk of Leamington, looks as secluded, as rural, and as little disturbed by the fashions of to-day, as if Doctor Jephson had never developed all those Parades and Crescents out of his magic well. I used to wonder whether the inhabitants had ever yet heard of railways, or, at their slow rate of progress, had even reached the epoch of stage-coaches.
For example, the earliest English railway carriages were built on the model of the old stage-coach, only that three stage-coaches, as it were, were telescoped together, side by side the very first bore the significant motto, Tria juncta in uno and it was this preconception of the English coachbuilder that has hampered us ever since with our hateful 'compartments, instead of the commodious and comfortable open American saloon carriages.
Few indeed were far-sighted enough to credit this estimate, and the incredulity of ignorance was aided by the forces of self-interest, for the profits of canals, stage-coaches, and carriers' vans were directly threatened by the innovation of railways.
This reminds me of an incident of Palestine travel which is pertinent here, so I will transfer it just in the language in which I find it set down in my Holy Land note-book: No doubt everybody has heard of Ben Holliday a man of prodigious energy, who used to send mails and passengers flying across the continent in his overland stage-coaches like a very whirlwind two thousand long miles in fifteen days and a half, by the watch!
He could not have been aware, he could not have half known even, how provincial it was, for he had never gone out of this countryside in which he was bred, or become acquainted with a different world; even on his journeys in stage-coaches he had not got free of it.
In the month of July I started on a walking tour through Jutland, with the scenery of which province I had not hitherto been acquainted; travelled also occasionally by the old stage-coaches, found myself at Skanderborg, which, for me, was surrounded by the halo of mediaeval romance; wandered to Silkeborg, entering into conversation with no end of people, peasants, peasant boys, and pretty little peasant girls, whose speech was not always easy to understand.
I thought it childish, and did not regard it; so he went to my brother with the same request, who inquired his reason. Jack told him the stage-coaches that passed our gate went very fast, because the four horses had four large hoops, meaning the wheels, and if he had a large hoop he could go as fast as the horses.
Their words rose, their fine sentiments curled up and down the pillars of the temple of eloquence, and fell flat to the floor. Meanwhile human nature travelled by stage-coaches; and postage for over a hundred miles rose to eighteen cents. Not a lover's sigh for a cent less; and it took a fortune for persons of sensibility to exchange sentiments.
This brought on a dissertation on stage-coaches in general, and the pleasure of keeping a chay of one's own; which led to another, on the great riches of Mr.
My earliest recollections carry me back faintly to the time when it was last used as a tavern, though I remember distinctly the building as it looked before it was taken away. Dearborn Emerson married a sister of Daniel Brooks, a large owner in the line of stage-coaches running through Groton from Boston to the northward; and this family connection was of great service to him.
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