There was an impression upon the public mind, natural enough from the
continually augmenting velocity of the mail, but quite erroneous, that
an outside seat on this class of carriages was a post of danger. On the
contrary, I maintained that, if a man had become nervous from some
gipsey prediction in his childhood, allocating to a particular moon now
approaching some unknown danger, and he should inquire earnestly, "Whither
can I go for shelter? Is a prison the safest retreat? Or a lunatic
hospital? Or the British Museum?" I should have replied, "Oh, no; I'll tell
you what to do. Take lodgings for the next forty days on the box of his
majesty's mail. Nobody can touch you there. If it is by bills at ninety
days after date that you are made unhappy--if noters and protesters are the
sort of wretches whose astrological shadows darken the house of life--then
note you what I vehemently protest, viz., that no matter though the sheriff
in every county should be running after you with his _posse_, touch a hair
of your head he cannot whilst you keep house, and have your legal domicile
on the box of the mail. It's felony to stop the mail; even the sheriff
cannot do that. And an _extra_ (no great matter if it grazes the sheriff)
touch of the whip to the leaders at any time guarantees your safety." In
fact, a bed-room in a quiet house, seems a safe enough retreat; yet it is
liable to its own notorious nuisances, to robbers by night, to rats, to
fire. But the mail laughs at these terrors. To robbers, the answer is
packed up and ready for delivery in the barrel of the guard's blunderbuss.
Rats again! there _are_ none about mail-coaches, any more than snakes in
Van Troil's Iceland; except, indeed, now and then a parliamentary rat, who
always hides his shame in the "coal cellar." And, as to fire, I never knew
but one in a mail-coach, which was in the Exeter mail, and caused by an
obstinate sailor bound to Devonport. Jack, making light of the law and the
lawgiver that had set their faces against his offence, insisted on taking
up a forbidden seat in the rear of the roof, from which he could exchange