gipsy prediction in his childhood, allocating to a particular moon now
approaching some unknown danger, and he should inquire earnestly,
"Whither can I fly 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 and under-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 is felony to stop the mail; even
the sheriff cannot do that. And an _extra_ touch of the whip to the
leaders (no great matter if it grazes the sheriff) at any time
guarantees your safety." In fact, a bedroom 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 Von Troil's Iceland;
[Footnote: "_Von Troil's Iceland_":--The allusion is to a well-
known chapter in Von Troil's work, entitled, "Concerning the Snakes of
Iceland." The entire chapter consists of these six words--"_There art
no snakes in Iceland_."] except, indeed, now and then a parliamentary
rat, who always hides his shame in what I have shown to be 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