I once witnessed on that road--not quite _that_ road, for the Quicksilver took a somewhat different line--the stage of four miles between Ilchester and Ilminster done in twenty minutes, and a trace broken and mended on the road! The mending was effected by the guard almost before the coach stopped. It is a level bit of road, four miles only for the entire stage, and was performed at a full gallop. That was done by a coach called the Telegraph, which was started some years after the Quicksilver, to do the distance from Exeter to London in the day. We left Exeter at 5 A.M., and reached London between nine and ten, with time for both breakfast and dinner on the road. I think the performance of the Exeter Telegraph was about the _ne plus ultra_ of coach travelling. One man drove fifty miles, and then meeting the other coach on the road, changed from one box to the other and drove back again. It was tremendously hard work! I once remarked to him as I sat beside him, that there was not much work for his whip arm. “Not much, sir,” he replied; “but just put your hand on my left arm!” I did, and felt the muscle swollen to its utmost, and hard as iron. “Many people think,” he said, “that it is easier work to drive such a coach and such a team as this, than to have to flog a dull team up to eight miles an hour. Nobody would think so that had ever tried both!” I once persuaded my mother, who was returning with me from Exeter to London, to make the journey on the box of the Telegraph, while I sat behind her. She had been a good deal afraid of the experiment, but admitted that she had never enjoyed a journey more. But having been led by my coaching reminiscences to speak of my visits to Exeter and to Fanny Bent, I must not turn that page of the past without dedicating a few lines to one to whom I had great cause to be gratefully attached, and whose character both in its high worth and its originality and singularity was a product of that day hardly likely to be reproduced in this.