Omnibus drivers are, as a body, intellectually inferior to conductors. They are usually brought up among horses, and, unlike the conductors, are totally unfitted for any other calling than the one by which they earn their living. Their wages, which are eight shillings a day, after one year’s service, enable them to live in comfort and to put a shilling on a horse in every race of any importance. They have no ambition but to “back a winner,” and many men who started driving at the age of twenty-one are not a penny richer after forty years’ regular work. They continue driving until they become too old, and then they realise that they have been exceedingly foolish. One driver, who for more than forty years earned over two guineas a week, now sweeps a crossing for a living. Many others have died in the workhouse. As a wit the omnibus driver is greatly overrated. There is nothing spontaneous about his witticisms, and all drivers let off exactly the same jokes. These are three from their stock:-- When a coal cart is in front of them: “Now then, short weight, hurry up!” When another omnibus remains at a point longer than usual: “Got a bit of freeehold there?” When they are driving home to the stables about midnight, and some would-be passenger hails them: “Not to-night, sir. We have the rest of the evening to ourselves.” But it must be admitted that omnibus drivers have the knack of delivering their remarks in a way that makes a stranger imagine that they are uttering them for the first time. And that is an art. At Christmas time there is a great demand among ’busmen for Rothschild’s racing colours. The drivers attach them to their whips and the conductors adorn their bell-pulls with them, as a slight acknowledgment of the welcome Christmas-box--a brace of pheasants--which they have received for many years from the firm of Rothschild. Originally these presents were given only to the coachmen and conductors of omnibuses which passed the Rothschilds’ houses, but now others receive them as well, and there must be about three thousand brace distributed every Christmas.