One or two coaches kept their horses at the White Horse, so as to be fresh for going up the hill, others at the Cricketers, while others changed at Compton and the New Hut. Some of the stables still remain, converted into cottages. The horses were fine animals, beautifully kept; but the habit of hanging about public-houses to attend to them was not good for the ostlers and people concerned. About fifteen coaches came through this place in the morning, and their fellows in the evening, each proprietor keeping two coaches, starting from the two opposite ends at the same time. There was the Mail, the Telegraph, the Independent, the Red Rover, the Hirondelle, all London coaches, besides the Oxford coach and some that only ran between Winchester and Southampton. The driver and owner of one, Mason's coach, was only a few years ago living here. When people intended to go on a journey, they booked their places a day or two beforehand, but for short journeys or going into Winchester they would watch for a vacant space in a coach as it passed by. It is odd to look back at an old article in a quarterly review describing coach travelling as something so swift and complete that it could not be surpassed in its perfection. Yet accidents with the spirited horses and rapid driving were not uncommon, and a fall from an overloaded coach was a dangerous thing. When the mail went by coach the sending of letters and parcels could not but be expensive. Heavy goods travelled by waggon, barge, or ship, parcels went by carriers or by coaches, and nothing could be posted but what was quite light. So postage was very expensive, and it is strange to look back on the regulations connected with it. Our readers under forty years old will hardly believe the rates that were paid for postage, varying according to distance. There was a company in London that carried letters from one part of that town to another for twopence apiece, and this was the cheapest post in England. A letter from London to Otterbourne cost eightpence, and one from Winchester either threepence or fourpence, one from Devonshire elevenpence, and this was paid not by the sender, but by the receiver. It was reckoned impolite to prepay a letter. Moreover, the letter had to be on a single sheet. The sheet might be of any size that could be had, but it must be only one. A small sheet enclosed within another, or the lightest thing, such as a lock of hair or a feather, made it a double letter, for which double postage had to be given. The usual custom was to write on quarto sheets twice the size of what is used now, and, after filling three sides, to fold the fourth, leaving a space for the direction and the seal, and then to write on the flaps and in the space over "My dear ---," sometimes crossing the writing till the whole letter was chequer work. For if the letter was to cost the receiver so much, it seemed fair to let him get as much as possible.