Conceive, then, the joy with which returning spring was greeted--spring, that brought back light and fresh food and intercourse with the world, outside the rural parish. Mankind had travelled far from those prehistoric times of annual terror, when the ignorant savage saw the sun’s light going out with the coming of winter, and so, with abject fear, passed the darkling months until the vernal solstice brought him hope again. No one in the Old England of two hundred and fifty years ago trembled lest the sun should not return at his appointed time; but when the sap rose and the birds began to sing again, and warmth and light had begun to replace the fogs and mists of winter, the hearts of all rejoiced. May Day was then the great merrymaking festival, but the first coach that ventured along the roads, now beginning to set after the winter’s rains, had a welcome of its own. At Sutton-on-Trent, on the Great North Road, the springtide custom of welcoming the early coaches was royally observed, and kept up for many years. No coach, during a whole week of jollity, was suffered to proceed through that jovial village without it halted and ate and drank as only Englishmen could then drink and eat. Guards, coachmen and passengers were freely feasted, willy-nilly. Young and old plied them with the good things, spread out upon a tray covered with a beautiful damask napkin, and heaped with plum-cakes, tartlets, gingerbread, and exquisite home-made bread and biscuits; while ale, currant and gooseberry wines, cherry brandy, and occasionally spirits, were eagerly pressed upon the strangers. Half a dozen damsels, all enchanting young people, neatly clad, rather shy, but courteously importunate, plied the passengers. Thoresby records a similar custom at Grantham, near by, on one of his journeys. Under date of May 4th, 1714, he says: “We dined at Grantham, and had the usual solemnity, being the first passage of the coach this season; the coachman and horses decked with ribbons and flowers, and the town music and young people in couples before us.” The “town music” was what we should nowadays call the Town Band.