Cornets-à-piston began to rival the key-bugle in the last years of coaching, and the hurly-burly grew terrific. To what lengths this progressive din would have been carried had not the coaching age itself come to an end let us not seek to inquire; but when the coaching revival of 1863 and succeeding years brought back some of the old sights and sounds of the road, key-bugles and their like were very properly voted bad form, and the older coach-horn regained and still retains its ancient ascendency. Those other instruments and all their possibilities are left to modern beanfeasters and Bank-holiday merrymakers, who, as the suburban Londoner knows only too well, do not fail to take full advantage of them. What became of the stage-coach guards? Some of them were killed, and thus never experienced the bitterness of finding their occupation gone. There is an inscription in the churchyard at Great Driffield, Yorkshire, to one who ended thus:-- TO THE MEMORY OF THOMAS RUSSELL, Guard of the “Wellington,” who lost his life by the Coach being unfortunately overturned at Nafferton, September 9th, 1825. Aged 36 years. Praises on Tomb Stones are but vainly spent; A Man’s Good Name is his best Monument. This Stone was erected by his Companions in Friendship. Less noticed by gossips on old coaching days than the coachmen were, their ending is more obscure, but it may be supposed that, like those occupants of the box-seat, many of them settled down as landlords of small inns in towns they had known when they travelled the road. CHAPTER XIII HOW THE COACHES WERE NAMED “What’s in a name? Little enough, by the fact that people travel by the Thame coach, the Hitchin chaises, and the Crawley stage.”--_Old Coaching Essay._