Transcribed from the [1891] Eyre and Spottiswoode edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org [Picture: Book cover] [Picture: Picture of Moses James Nobbs] OLD COACHING DAYS * * * * * SOME INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF MOSES JAMES NOBBS, THE LAST OF THE MAIL COACH GUARDS. _Told by Himself_. * * * * * With a Preface by the Controller of the London Postal Service. * * * * * _Price Sixpence_. * * * * * PREFACE. BY the operation of the new Order in Council regulating Civil Service superannuations, under which officers who have attained the age of sixty-five have—_nolens volens_—to take their pensions, there will be, at the end of this year 1891, quite an exodus of many who through the survival of the strongest and fittest are still serving Her Majesty, although they have reached the Psalmist’s allotted span of three score years and ten. The loss of our veterans in this manner will be accompanied by many a pang of regret, but in the case of Mr. Moses James Nobbs, the last of the Mail Coach Guards, who is now about to be pensioned, the regret is softened by the circumstance that he recognises his inability to work any longer, and finds the quiet and comfort of country life at Uxbridge, to which place he is retiring, more suitable than Post Office occupation at a busy London Railway Station. Mr. Nobbs has been in the service of the Post Office fifty-five years. He commenced life as a Mail Guard, and for years worked on Mail coaches. When the old coach system was superseded by railway service Mr. Nobbs did postal duty for some years as Mail Guard on the London and Exeter Railway, and was afterwards appointed to superintend the receipt and despatch of Mail bags at Paddington Station. Thus he was better known to travellers of all degrees on the Great Western line of Railway than to his fellow-servants, with whom he was not brought much into contact, owing to the fact that his duties confined him to the Paddington Terminus. In order, therefore, that this Post Office _rara avis_ might be brought into prominence—as his early retirement was then foreseen—I wrote of him as follows in a published report on the Post Office work in the Christmas Season of 1889:—