As for the “Old Bell,” another of these starting-points of the Uxbridge coaches, it was pulled down in 1897. It stood on the site of Gamage’s, in Holborn, opposite Fetter Lane. Of another Uxbridge house, the “Bull,” a few doors away, the sign, the figure of a ferocious black bull, very properly chained and fastened by a secure girth, still exists on the frontage, but “Black Bull Chambers,” a set of grimy modern “model” dwellings, now occupy the coach-yard. The “Bell and Crown,” afterwards “Ridler’s,” next Furnival’s Inn, has been swept away to help make room for an extension of the Prudential Assurance Offices, and the “New Inn,” 52, Old Bailey, has given place to warehouses and the premises of a firm of wholesale newsagents. Away westward, the Uxbridge and other short stages called at the “Green Man and Still,” at the corner of Argyll Street, Oxford Circus, and at the “Gloucester Warehouse,” near Park Lane. The last-named was rebuilt forty years ago, but the “Green Man and Still” was only demolished in February 1901. [Illustration: THE SHORT STAGE. _After J. Pollard._ ] The time taken over the eighteen miles between the City and Uxbridge was three hours. To Richmond in 1821, when short stages ran frequently from five different inns, the time was an hour and a half. As many as fourteen coaches ran to that town in 1838, most of them making six journeys a day. Shillibeer and his omnibuses, introduced in 1829, had by that time rendered the exclusive short-stages old-fashioned, and they were gradually replaced by the more commodious and popular vehicles, whose occupants were in turn looked down upon by the short-stage passengers, just as _they_ had been despised by the four-horse coaches. CHAPTER IX COACH-PROPRIETORS