Sixty years before, Clarke had seen the railway come to Coventry, and bring many changes in its wake, among them the rebuilding of the comfortable old inns. He was old enough to have driven Mr. Pickwick, or Mr. Pickwick’s originator, on that remarkably wet journey from Birmingham to Towcester. It was probably at the old “King’s Head” that the post-chaise team was changed that night. When they stopped, the steam ascended from the horses in such clouds as wholly to obscure the ostler, whose voice was, however, heard to declare from the mist that he expected the first Gold Medal from the Humane Society, on their next distribution of awards, for taking the postboy’s hat off; the water descending from the brim of which, the invisible gentleman declared, must inevitably have drowned him (the postboy) but for his great presence of mind in tearing it promptly from his head, and drying the gasping man’s countenance with a wisp of straw. Here it was that Sam Weller, “lowering his voice to a mysterious whisper,” asked Bob Sawyer if he had ever “know’d a churchyard where there was a postboy’s tombstone,” or “had ever seen a dead postboy.” “No!” rejoined Bob, “I never did.” “No!” rejoined Sam, triumphantly, “nor never will; and there’s another thing that no man never see, and that’s a dead donkey. No man never see a dead donkey”; adding that, “without goin’ so far as to as-sert, as some wery sensible people do, that postboys and donkeys is both immortal, wot I say is this; that wenever they feels theirselves gettin’ stiff and past their work, they just rides off together, wun postboy to a pair in the usual way; wot becomes on ’em nobody knows, but its werry probable as they starts away to take their pleasure in some other vorld, for there ain’t a man alive as ever see either a donkey or a postboy a-taking his pleasure in this!” The “King’s Head,” as already hinted, has been rebuilt in the stained glass and glitter style, and is quite uninteresting, save for the effigy of “Peeping Tom,” moved from the frontage of a neighbouring old house, peering curiously from an upper storey. XLV