A fortnight ago, having occasion to visit Somerset, I found myself _en route_, at Cheltenham--a place, by the way, which always reminds me of miscellaneous articles stored in a second-hand shop; it is sure to come into use once in seven years. There I was for the night, luxuriously lodged in this Anglo-foreign town, this self-styled "queen of watering-places," this city of salt--or salts, as some malicious pluralists will have it--there I was, and long ere morning broke, I had decided upon cutting the rail and coaching it to Bristol; in other words, as time was not an object, I would not go some fifty miles round to save it. I was soon seated by my old friend, "coachee." Coachee was a character _sui generis_, of a race which will soon be extinct; I had known him in the "palmy days" of the road, and remembered the time when he, with his pair, was selected to tease and oppose the prettiest four-in-hand that ever trotted fourteen miles an hour. It was, if I'm not mistaken, in 1832, that "The Exquisite" first started from Exeter to Cheltenham, and weighing the coach, the cattle and coachman together, never was a turn-out more worthy of the title. To oppose this with a pair was a bold conception, but "coachee" was an old stager; "what man dared do" he dared, and did it well. "Strange changes, Mr. Coachee, since you and I first knew each other," said I to my right hand friend, as soon as we had cleared the rattle of the stones. Coachee turned his head slowly round, and looked me full in the face; he _drew in_ such a sigh, and put on such a look of miserable scorn, that I felt for the silent sufferer. Yet was I dumbfounded by his silence; I had looked for the jibes and jests which were wont to put us outsides in a roar,--but to see "coachee" turned into a man of mute sorrow, was a character so new and unnatural, that--extremes will meet--I burst into a hearty fit of laughter. Coachee attempted to preserve the penseroso, and with ill-feigned gravity tried to reprove me, by saying,--"_You_ may laugh, sir, but it's no joke for _us_ as loses." With what tact I could bring to bear, I revived the memory of former days, the coachman's golden age! I spoke of "the Exquisite," and asked if he did not once beat it with his pair. "So you've heard tell of that, have you?" And Alexander never chuckled half so much to hear his praises sung, as coachee did at the thoughts of his victory. I told him I had heard of it from others, but never from his own mouth, which was half the battle. There needed but little persuasion to make him tell his own story.