“George,” said he, “do not take on so. After all it is only a horse, and that an old one. If you had lost a wife, that would have been a different matter altogether, and there would have been some excuse for tears, but—a horse—” “Ah, maister,” replied the post-boy, “wives!—one has but to hold up the finger, and they’d come flying to you from all sides—more than you can accommodate; but an ’oss—and such a mare as this—booh!” and he burst into tears again. “Such a mare as this is not to be found again in a hurry.” When a little subdued, he explained himself: “You see, maister, ’osses cost money, good ’osses cost a power of money, but wimen wifes—they don’t cost you a ha’penny piece.” George Spurle kept a list of all the great persons he had ridden before, and his list is before me as I write. Unhappily he has not dated his several stages, and his spelling makes his MS. sometimes hard to unravel. For instance, “Druv the Duck of Dangle’em” apparently means le Duc d’Angoulême, and “the Count D. Parry” is le Comte de Paris. After a long list beginning with royalty, he winds up, “Members of the American legation and Van Amburgh’s lions and tigers in American vans. Lunatics and hospital patients with fractured limbs, gold bullion, convicts in vans, also naturalists and gaiests [_sic_] to be married, the junior of springs [_sic_] two months old and an aged person living ninety-four years, the oldest to the grave a hundred years and six months. Adventurers, photographers, explorers of Mont Blanck [_sic_] and Africa. Comercials [_sic_], astronomers and philosophers and popular auctioneers, Canadian rifles, American merchants, racehorses in vans with gold caps. Mackeral [_sic_] fish and several deans and bankers. Paupers to onions [_sic_], some idjots and Sir H. Seale Hayne Bart.” The old post-boy was never married. Before the days of railways he was in constant request, but the whirligig of time brought about its changes that touched George Spurle to the quick, and thrust him from his seat.