Railways themselves were at first ridiculed, and suffered from the necessity of obtaining Parliamentary sanction at a period when the landowning interests and public opinion were decidedly hostile. Even when their construction was authorised, every one ridiculed the railways, and called those people fools who had invested their money in them. To be a railway shareholder was at that time, to the majority of people, proof positive of insanity, while engineers and directors were regarded as curious compounds of fools and rogues. Any time between 1833 and 1837, the coachmen on the Great North Road would point out to their box-seat passengers the works of the London and Birmingham in progress beside that highway, and distinctly visible all the way between Potter’s Bar and Hatfield and at various other points. “Going to run us off the road, _they say_” a coachman would remark, jerking his elbow and nodding his head towards the place where hundreds of navvies were delving in a cutting or tipping an embankment. Then, squirting a stream of saliva from between his front teeth, in the practised manner assiduously cultivated by admiring amateurs, he would lapse into a contemplative silence, quite undisturbed by any suspicion that the railway really would run the coaches off. The passengers by coach were nearly all of the same mind. Some thought the railways would be useful in carrying goods, but declined to believe that they or any one else would ever travel by them; and a large proportion of the railway directors and proprietors shared the same opinion, being quite convinced that railways would convey heavy articles and general merchandise, and that coaches would continue to run as of old. Lovers of the road, coachmen and passengers alike, called the engines “tea-kettles,” protested that coaching had nothing to fear, and wished their heads might never ache until railroads came into fashion. They declared they would never--no, _never_--go by the railroad; but at length, when some urgent occasion arose, demanding speed, they trusted their precious persons in a railway train, and, to their surprise, found it “not so bad after all.” The next occasion, such a person going to town would shrink as he encountered the “Swallow” coach, by which he had always travelled, and would feel guilty as he shook his head to the coachman’s “Coming by me this morning, sir?” Why? Because he had made up his mind to go by train, and so save something in time and pocket. This time our traveller rather liked it; and thus the “Swallow,” and many another coach not already withdrawn, was doomed. Let us follow the career of such a coach, to its last days.