"My uncle rested his head upon his hands and thought of the busy bustling people who had rattled about, years before, in the old coaches, and were now as silent and changed; he thought of the numbers of people to whom once, those crazy, mouldering vehicles had borne, night after night, for many years, and through all weathers, the anxiously expected intelligence, the eagerly looked for remittance, the promised assurances of health and safety, the sudden announcement of sickness and death. The merchant, the lover, the wife, the widow, the mother, the school boy, the very child who tottered to the door at the postman's knock--how had they all looked forward to the arrival of the old coach! And where were they all now?"--_Charles Dickens._ [Illustration: STAGE COACH] Stage drivers as a class did not rank as high morally as wagoners, but despite this there were among them men of good sense, honest intentions and steady habits. As typical of the better class, the reader who is familiar with the old road will readily recall Redding Bunting, Samuel Luman, Elliott Seaburn, Watty Noble, James Carroll, Aquila and Nat Smith, William Scott, David Gordon, James Burr, William Robinson, John Huhn, David Bell, John Guttery, John Ritter, Joseph Henderson and Peter Null. Others will be instantly recognized as their names shall appear on these pages. It is the sincere belief of all old pike boys that the stage lines of the National Road were never equalled in spirit and dash on any road, in any age or country. The chariots of the Appian Way, drawn by the fastest horses of ancient Italy, formed a dismal cortege in comparison with the sprightly procession of stage coaches on the old American highway. The grandeur of the old mail coach is riveted forever in the memory of the pike boy. To see it ascending a long hill, increasing speed, when nearing the summit, then moving rapidly over the intervening level to the top of the next hill, and dashing down it, a driver like the stately Redding Bunting wielding the whip and handling the reins, revealed a scene that will never be forgotten. And there was another feature of the old stage lines that left a lasting mark on memory's tablet. It was the "Postilion." A groom with two horses was stationed at the foot of many of the long hills, and added to the ordinary team of four horses to aid in making the ascent. The summit gained, the extra horses were quickly detached and returned to await and aid the next coming coach, and this was the "Postilion." Nathan Hutton is a well remembered old postilion. He was a tall, spare man, and lived in a small log house on the roadside, a short distance west of the old Johnson tavern, and four and a half miles east of Brownsville. At the foot of the hill below his house, he re-enforced the coaches with his postilion both ways, east and west, up Colley's hill, going west, and the equally long hill, coming east from that point.