With these business details the travelling public had no concern, and it was only the box-seat passengers who learnt the history of some of these cheap acquisitions from private stables. The box-seat passenger was generally a sporting character, aspiring to that companionship with the coachman from his love of horses and driving, but it naturally often happened that some stolid person, whose only desire was to be carried safely and who took no interest in driving, found himself perched on that place of honour. When such an one became the unwilling confidant of the coachman he was apt to hear some nerve-shaking things. “See that ’ere near wheeler?” said one Jehu. “Run avay vith a old gennelman last veek, he did; broke his neck; friends just goin’ to shoot ’im; guv’nor gave couple o’ suvrings for ’im, and ’ere ’e is. ’Ope we shan’t be upset!” The nervous passenger effected an exchange for an inside place with a sporting passenger at the next stage--which was precisely the result anticipated by the coachman. At this time, when the fast day-coaches were in every respect as well-appointed as a gentleman’s private drag, it was the keenest ambition of every dashing young traveller to occupy this box-seat--an ambition generally satisfied by putting in an early appearance at the starting-point and tipping the head yard-porter, who thereupon placed a rug or some stable-cloths on it. These tips were not, as generally supposed, the coachman’s perquisite. His turn came later on, down the road. The yard-porter was as a much more important official than the present generation might suppose, and in busy yards, such as those of the “Bull and Mouth” or the “Swan with Two Necks,” his weekly income from tips probably amounted to £5, or more. Nor was he merely the man with a pail of water, a broom and a pitchfork conjured up mentally by the sound of his title; his was an important department, and himself the ruler of many subordinates, whose duties ranged from grooming and bedding-down the horses and cleaning the stables to washing the coaches and cleaning and polishing the harness and metal-work.