For these men, and for the amateur coachees who during the Regency had occupied the box-seats of the foremost stages, this last period of coaching represented everything that was healthful and manly, and when the last wheel had turned, and the ultimate blast from the guard's bugle had sounded; when the roadside inn and its well-filled stables became deserted; and when the few remaining coachmen, post-boys, and ostlers had either accepted situations with the railway companies or had gone into the workhouse, a glamour clothed the by-gone dispensation that has lost nothing with the lapse of time. The pity is that these thorough-going admirers of days as dead as those of the Pharaohs were so largely "mute, inglorious Miltons," and have left so small a record of their stirring times awheel. [Sidenote: _AN OLD COACHMAN TALKS_] One of the last coachmen on this road was interviewed by a local paper some years ago, and the inclusion here of his reminiscences is inevitable. The "Last of the Old Whips" they called him:-- "He was sitting by a blazing fire, in a cheerful, pleasant room, evidently enjoying a glass of 'something hot' in the style that 'Samivel's father' would have thoroughly appreciated. But truth compels us to add that he had evidently seen better days, and that the comforts with which he was now temporarily surrounded had been strangers to him many a long day. Yet there were many still living who remembered 'young Sam Carter' as a dashing whip, who knew a good team when he sat behind them, and had handled the ribbons in a most workmanlike fashion. But the old fire and energy are still unquenched, either by the lapse of years or the pressure of hard times, and the veteran gladly gives the rein to memory and spins a yarn of the old coaching days. [Sidenote: _REMINISCENCES_]