“The day has been a miserable specimen: incessant rain, with a biting easterly wind, giving an inappropriately jocose gentleman the opportunity of offering facetious remarks upon ‘heavy wet,’ and ‘cold without.’ You enter the best parlour of the inn, anticipating a warm welcome and a share in those creature comforts looked forward to in such circumstances by all. But here the legal axiom, that ‘possession is nine points of the law,’ is realised to your horror and dismay in a sight of the first-comers on an earlier coach occupying every seat near the fire; while a tablecloth covered with fragments, and a disarray of empty glasses tell a tale of another dinner having recently been ‘polished off.’ “‘Waiter, waiter!’ shriek half a dozen voices in as many keys, and in accents ranging from the imperious to the imploring. Enters then a slipshod, soiled being, with watery eyes and apologetic mien. ‘Here, you, where’s the dinner?’ chorus the starving, half-drenched passengers. “‘Dinner?’--scratching his head; ’er--well--er: beg pardon, gents, but the “Independent” was rather late like to-day, and the “Highflyer,” she were down early, and--er----’ Well, the gist of all these apologetics was that the company had to wait while the next joint was being dished up. “Meanwhile the ‘Independents’ absorbing all the fire are bustled off by a portly man in a low-crowned hat and a huge caped box-coat, or ‘upper Benjamin,’ as it used to be called. ‘Gentlemen,’ he roars, ‘time’s up!’ With great to-do of cloaking, shawling, greatcoating, and paying, they are outside, and we, in the twinkling of an eye, in their fireside seats, listening to the curses levelled at the ostler by the outsides for letting the seats get wet. With a precautionary ‘Sit tight,’ they lurch violently off, and we are left anxiously awaiting the arrival of that dinner. “At last it comes: a procession of three--the landlady, parlourmaid, and waiter--bearing dishes with tin covers. These battered relics removed, a coarse fat leg of mutton, roasted to a cinder, is unveiled, together with a huge joint of boiled beef, very much underdone; potatoes, hot without and hard within, and some gritty cabbage. “‘Slice of mutton for a lady,’ says the waiter, approaching a stout gentleman in the act of helping himself to that part of the joint so highly prized by epicures, called the ‘Pope’s eye.’ The direction of the knife is instantly changed, and the lady’s plate filled with a somewhat less desirable ration. ‘Please, sir, a little fat,’ continues the assiduous waiter, ‘and a little gravy,’ he adds, anxious to earn a tip from the old stager of the male sex, who thus invariably forwarded his demands, as coming from a lady. Numerous other applications are made to the carver, who, disgusted with his place, helps himself to his coveted delicacy, and requests the waiter, with emphasis, to attend to the other passengers himself.