The goods department at Camden was taken over by the London and North-Western Railway in Benjamin Worthy Horne’s time, long before the general parcels and receiving-office branch was absorbed. The decision to terminate the contract was a source of much annoyance to him, on account of the reason given, which was that the business was not efficiently conducted. Although he was a man who in general had a horror of going to law, this stigma upon his business methods so stung him that he brought an action against the railway company for breach of contract, in order to vindicate his position. This was going to law for an idea, and as the company had a perfect right to terminate the contract, the action of course failed; but it was made abundantly evident that the business was efficiently carried on, and that the railway was only proposing to take it over because the time was ripe for such a development. His heavy costs, amounting to £1200, were afterwards very handsomely refunded to Mr. Horne by the railway. It remains to say that although there was no keener or more ruthless man of business than Benjamin Worthy Horne, he was privately a considerate and kindly man, helpful and charitable to those less successful than himself. He had a pretty estate at Highlands, Mereworth, and a town residence at 33, Russell Square. He died at the latter place, April 14th, 1870, aged sixty-six, leaving property valued at £250,000. CHAPTER X COACH-PROPRIETORS (_continued_) Edward Sherman, who ranked next to Chaplin as the largest coach-proprietor in London, was in many respects unlike his brethren in the trade. He established himself at the “Bull and Mouth,” St. Martin’s-le-Grand, in 1823, in succession to Willans, and came direct from the Stock Exchange, where he had been a broker in alliance with Lewis Levy, a noted figure in those days of Turnpike Trusts. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to add that Levy was a Jew. He was referred to by Lord Ravensworth in the course of a discussion in the House of Lords on Metropolitan Toll-gates in 1857 as “a gentleman of the Hebrew persuasion.” Persuasion, indeed! As well might you describe a born Englishman or Frenchman as born into those nationalities by personal choice and election. Levy was, of course, a Jew by birth, and had no choice in the matter. He was a farmer of turnpike-tolls to the extent of half a million sterling per annum, and a very wealthy man. Levy put Sherman into the coaching business, and he immediately began to make things extremely uncomfortable for the older proprietors, who had up to that time been content with going at eight or nine miles an hour.