There were then, among others, the Royal Mail, in 9¾ hours; the “Express” (a misnomer, indeed), in nine hours, from the “Golden Cross,” by Tunbridge Wells; “Paragon,” in eight hours, by Tunbridge Wells; and “Regulator,” by Tonbridge. Hastings, therefore, was always badly served, and must have grumbled quite as much in the coaching era as it does under the dilatory service of the South Eastern Railway. The last years of the Hastings Mail, or, as it was known in its two ultimate decades, the “Hastings and St. Leonards,” were signalised by a successful attempt on the part of Horne and Gray and their country partners to screw an extra mileage rate out of the tight-fisted Post Office for carrying the mails. It seems that the Mail had not been keeping time, and that the partners had received some remonstrances on the subject from St. Martin’s-le-Grand. It was a fine opening for a revision, and accordingly, in December, 1841, they informed the Postmaster-General that they really could not keep strictly to the terms laid down by the contract they had signed in 1835, unless the mileage rate were raised from 1⅜_d._ a mile to 3⅜_d._ The extra allowance would permit of four horses being used instead of two: a thing not only desirable, they said, but really necessary on so hilly a road. In January, 1842, the Postmaster-General graciously acceded to this request, and for its expiring years the Mail rose to this unwonted dignity. The “Bolt-in-Tun” coach-office in Fleet Street still stands at the corner of Bouverie Street, somewhat altered, and now the offices of _Black and White_. The walls are the same, and the archway depicted in the curious business-card, reproduced here, may yet be noticed. [Illustration: BUSINESS-CARD OF THE “BOLT-IN-TUN” COACH OFFICE.] Of the coachmen on the road to Tunbridge Wells and Hastings we know as little as—nay even less than—of the coaches, and almost the only touch of character is that drawn by a writer in the _Sporting Magazine_ of 1830, in describing one Stockdale, who drove some coach unnamed. He was, we are told, “a good whip.” He was also, like poor old Cross, on the King’s Lynn road, something of a literary character, and “beguiled the time on the road with Cockney slang and quotations from Pope!” He drove to London and back six days a week—the Sunday, he said, he spent at home studying the Greek Testament and translating Οἱ οἱ τυφοὶ ὁδηοί into “Wo, wo, ye blind leaders!” But coaches were by no means the only public conveyances along this road. There were, indeed, in 1838, many vans and waggons to Tunbridge Wells and to Hastings. Bennett’s vans and waggons plied to Tunbridge Wells four times a week; those of Jarvis thrice, Diggen’s five times, Barnett’s four, Shepherd’s three, Young’s and Harris’s twice, and Wickin’s once: twenty-seven vans and waggons weekly to “the Wells.” To Hastings the waggons respectively of Moore & Co., Shepherd & Co., Stanbury & Co., and Richardson journeyed daily. IV