Our little village was situated on the high road between London and Great Yarmouth, along which rolled twice a day the London and Yarmouth Royal Mail, drawn by four horses, and driven by a fat man in red, whom we raw village lads regarded as a very superior person indeed. Behind sat the guard, also in red, with a horn, which he blew lustily when occasion required. There was a time, but that was much later, when a day coach was put on, and, as it changed horses at our village inn, one of our chief delights was to see the tired, heated, smoking horses taken out, and their places filled by a new set, much given to kicking and plunging at starting, to the immense delight of the juvenile spectators. Even the passengers I regarded with awe. In fourteen hours would they not be in London where the King lived—where were the Houses of Parliament, the Bank and the Tower and the soldiers? What would I not have given to be on that roof urging on, under the midnight stars, my wild career! Now and then a passenger would be dropped in our little village. What a nine days’ wonder he was, especially if he were a Cockney and talked in the language of Cockaigne—if he had heard the Iron Duke, or seen royalty from afar. Nonconformity flourished in the village in spite of the fact that the neighbouring baronet, at the gates of whose park the village may be said to have commenced, was Sir Thomas Gooch—(Guche was the way the villagers pronounced his dread name)—for was he not a county magistrate, who could consign people to Beccles Gaol, some eight miles off, and one of the M.P.’s for the county, and did not he and his lady sternly set their faces against Dissent? If now and then there were coals and blankets to be distributed—and very little was done in that way, charity had not become fashionable then—you may be sure that no Dissenter, however needy and deserving, came in for a share.