“You’re laughing at me, you rascal; bring another chicken!” “No more chickens, sir; roast lamb, would the lady like? hot or cold; green peas, new potatoes?” ... “Your apple tart, sir. Ale, sir. Claret, ma’am.” ... Dinner disposed of, the coach is ready, but one of our passengers is missing. Has any one seen him? He went off, it seems, to see the cathedral, instead of having dinner. Fortunately for himself he comes hurrying up just as we are starting, and the guard hauls him up to his outside place by main force. “Tip us a tune,” says the coachman to the guard, who, rendered sentimental by the steak and the bottle of stout he had for dinner in the bar, in company with the buxom barmaid, responds with “Believe me, if all those Endearing Young Charms,” as we pass the frowning portal of Bootham Bar and bump along the very rough street of Clifton, York’s modern suburb. This is a thirteen-and-a-half mile stage from York to Easingwold; but although long, it is an easy one for the horses, if the coachman does not demand pace of them, on account of the dead level of the road. He very wisely lets them take their own speed, only now and then shaking the reins when they seem inclined to slacken from their steady trot. It is a lonely stretch of country, treeless, flat, melancholy; and the appearance of Easingwold is welcomed. At the “Rose and Crown” the new team is put in, and off we go again, the ten miles to Thirsk. At Northallerton the horses are changed for a fresh team at the “Golden Lion,” and the fat coachman, assisted down with almost as much trouble as he was hoisted up, resigns the ribbons into the hands of another. The usual knot of sightseers of the little town are gathered about the inn to witness the one event of the day, the arrival of the London coach. Among them one perceives the coachman out of a place; a beggar out at elbows; three recruits with ribbons in their hats, not quite recovered from last night’s drink, and stupidly wondering how the ribbons got there; the “coachman wot is to take the next stage”; several errand boys wasting their masters’ time; and a horsey youth with small fortune but large expectations, who is the idler of the place--the local man about town. There is absolutely nothing else for the inhabitants of Northallerton to do for amusement but to watch the coaches, the post-chaises and the chariots as they pass along the one long and empty street.