A reminiscent traveller, writing in 1831, lets some light into dark places. He said he was old enough to remember a certain West-country coach, which he took to be representative of others at that period. It always took ten, and sometimes twelve hours to do fifty-seven miles. “Now,” he said, marvelling at the progress of the age, “it takes only six hours.” Joe Emmens, the driver of this slow coach, was famous for never at any time turning away a would-be passenger, no matter how crowded his conveyance, which was often observed to be carrying seventeen out and nine in, with parcels and hampers tied to and suspended from all kinds of hazardous places. This did not, we sorrowfully acknowledge, argue zeal for his employers’ interests, but only an inordinate appetite for those “short fares” which by ancient use and wont the coachman pocketed. The custom was as old as that of “tipping.” Tipping the coachman, a practice already mentioned, was early introduced. It originated, there can scarce be any reasonable doubt, with the very first stage-coach journey, and flourished exceedingly to the very last, when the guard as well came in for his share. The custom was originally known as “capping,” from the coachman coming with hat or cap in hand for these contributions: a humble and beggarly method to which the later artists of the coachbox were wholly strangers. The later generation, it is true, removed their hats as a matter of courtesy when they “left you here,” but their fee was no longer chucked negligently into that headgear, as of old, but discreetly inserted into an extended palm, and received as of right. The earliest stages of tipping showed the practice in a very logical and commonsense light, for although the later coachmen could be very surly and disobliging if they were not “remembered,” they had not a tithe of those opportunities of being actively offensive which the older race of drivers enjoyed. The later generations of coachmen were more directly responsible. They worked to a time-table, on good roads, with fine cattle and perfect coaches; the older men stopped when and where they liked, and altogether had the comfort or discomfort of their passengers very largely in their hands. Thus they were to be conciliated and kept in good humour by a reasonable expectancy of vails. We first hear of tipping in 1665, in _The Committee_, Sir Robert Howard’s comedy, where the vulgar committeeman’s wife gives Toby, the coachman, something less than he expected. “By my whip,” he says aside, “’tis a groat of more than ordinary thinness. Plague on this new gentry,” he adds, with a sneer, “how liberal they are!” “Tipping” grew and flourished extravagantly in after ages. The wealthy and the free-handed set the standard then, as they do now in these otherwise altered times, with the result that those who could not afford the outlay in which the richer indulged were generally insulted or neglected.