Stage-coach and Tavern Days

Old Passenger Pung.

It can readily be seen how important the tavern must have been in such a town as Haverhill, what a news centre, what an attraction, what an education. Newspapers were infrequent, but none were needed when newcomers from all points of the compass brought all there was to tell from everywhere. Mine host was the medium through which information was spread; he came into close contact with leaders in law, politics, and business, and dull he must have been if he did not profit in mental growth. But he could not be dull, he had to be companionable and intelligent; hence we find the tavern-keeper the leading man in town, prominent in affairs, and great in counsel, and it was to the stage-coach he owed much of his intelligence and influence.

CHAPTER XV

In a home-library in an old New England town there were for half a century two sets of books which seemed strangely alien to the other staid occupants of the bookshelves, which companions were chiefly rows of encyclopædias, Scott’s novels, the Spectator and Tatler, a large number of books of travel, and scores of biographies, autobiographies and memoirs of pious “gospellers,” English and American, chiefly missionaries. These two special sets of books were large volumes, but were not placed primly and orderly with others of their own size; they were laid on their sides thrust high up among the smaller books on the upper shelves as if to escape notice under the frames of the glazed doors. They were strictly tabooed to all the younger members of the family, and were, indeed, well out of our reach; but Satan can find library steps for idle and very inquisitive little souls to climb, and we had read them eagerly before we were in our teens. One set was that inestimable and valuable work London Labour and London Poor, which was held to be highly improper reading for the young, but which I found very entertaining, as being of folk as remote from my life as if they were gnomes and elves. The other volumes were Pierce Egan’s Book of Sports; and one, a prince of wicked books, entitled Life in London: or the Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorne, Esq., and his elegant friend Corinthian Tom accompanied by Bob Logic, the Oxonian, in their Rambles and Sprees through the Metropolis. This also was by Pierce Egan.

Relay House.

That this latter most reprehensible book (from the standard of the Puritan household in which it was found) should have been preserved at all must have been, I think, from the fact that the illustrations were by Cruikshank, and delightful pictures they were. Though this book was so ill-regarded in New England, its career in England was a most brilliant one. It was the most popular work in British literature in the years 1820 to 1850; in fact, to many Englishmen it was the book, the literature, of the period. One claim it has to the consideration of the reading public to-day: it is perhaps the best picture existing of Society, or, as it was termed in the words of the day, of “Life, Fashion, and Frolic,” in the times of George IV. Thackeray tells, in his article on George Cruikshank, of the lingering fondness he had for this old book, but even when he wrote could find no copy either in the British Museum or in London circulating libraries. It was dramatized by several hands, and had long runs on the stage both in England and the United States; and I do not doubt wealthy young men in the large American cities tried to emulate the sports of the London Tom and Jerry. In the peculiar affectations of the bucks and bloods of that day, from the king down, shown in the love of all low sports, in association, even familiarity, with low sportsmen, and in the domination of the horse in sporting life, we see the reason for the high perfection and participation of the rich in coaching in England—a perfection which was aped in some respects in America. Coaching is less talked about than other sports by Jerry and the elegant Corinthian Tom (whose surname is never once given), probably because their dissipations and sprees were those of the city, not of turnpike roads and green lanes. But the life of the day, perhaps the idlest, most aimless era of fashion in English history, the life most thoroughly devoid of any spirituality or intellectuality, yet never exactly unintelligent and never dull, lives forever in Pierce Egan’s pages; and lives for me with the intensity of reality from the eager imprinting on the fresh memory of a little child of unfamiliar scenes and incomprehensible words, knowledge even of whose existence was sternly forbidden.

I obtained from these books a notion of an English coachman, as an idealized being, a combination of Phœbus Apollo, a Roman charioteer, and the Prince Regent. I fancied our American coach-drivers as glorious likewise, though with a lesser refulgence; and I distinctly recall my disappointment at the reality of the first coachman of my first coach-ride from Charlestown, New Hampshire. A man, even on a day of Indian Summer, all in hide and fur: moth-eaten fur gloves, worn fur cap with vast ear-flaps and visor, and half-bare buffalo-hide coat, and out of all these ancient skins but one visible feature, a great, shining, bulbous nose. But even the paling days of stage-coaches were then long past; and the ancient coachman had long been shorn of his glory. In the days of his prime he was a power in the land, though he was not like the English coachman.

From Mr. Miner and others who remember the great days of stage-coach travel, I learn that our American drivers were a dignified and interesting class of men. Imposing in bearskin caps, in vast greatcoats, and with their teams covered with ivory rings, with fine horses and clean coaches, they and their surroundings were pleasant to the eyes. They acquired characteristic modes of speaking, of thinking. They were terse and sententious in expression, had what is termed horse sense. They had prudence and ability and sturdy intelligence. They carried from country to town, from house to house, news of the health of loved ones, or of sickness when weary nurses were too tired to write. A kindly driver would stop his horses or walk them past a lane corner where an anxious mother or sister waited, dreading; and passengers in the coach would hear him call out to her, “John’s better, fever’s all gone.”

They were character-readers, of man and horse alike. They had great influence in the community they called home, and their word was law. They were autocrats in their own special domain, and respected everywhere. No wonder they loved the life. Harrison Bryant, the veteran Yankee whip, inherited a fine farm in Athol. He at once gave up his hard life as a driver, bade good-by to the cold and exposure, the long hours of work, the many hardships, and settled down to an existence of sheltered prosperity. On the third day of his life on the farm he stood at the edge of a field as a stage passed on the road. The driver gave “the Happy Farmer” a salute and snapped his whip. The horses started ahead on the gallop, a passenger on top waved good-by to him; the coach bounded on and disappeared. Farmer Bryant walked sombrely across the field to his new home, packed his old carpet-bag, went to the stage-office in the next town, and two days later he swept down the same road on the same coach, snapping his whip, waving his hand, leaving the miles behind him. He was thus one week off the coach-box, and at the end of his long life had a well-established record of over one hundred and thirty-five thousand miles of stage driving, more than five times round the world.

The Relay.

A letter written by an “old-timer” says:—

“I remember many of the old stage-drivers. What a line was the old ‘accommodation’ put on by Gen. Holman and others! What a prince of drivers was Driver Day! Handsome, dressy, and a perfect lady’s man! How many ladies were attracted to a seat on the box beside him! Then such a team, and with what grace they were guided! How many young men envied his grace as a driver! So, also, what gentlemen were the tavern-keepers of that day! They studied to please the public by their manners, though behind the scenes some of them could spice their conversation with big words.”

A very vivid description of the dress of the old stage-drivers of Haverhill and other New Hampshire towns was given me by Mr. Amos Tarleton, an old inhabitant of the town. He says:—

“The winter dress of these old drivers was nearly all alike. Their clothing was of heavy homespun, calfskin boots, thick trousers tucked inside the boots, and fur-lined overshoes over the boots. Over all these were worn Canadian hand-knit stockings, very heavy and thick, colored bright red, which came up nearly to the thighs, and still over that a light leather shoe. Their coats were generally fur or buffalo skin with fur caps with ear protectors, either fur or wool tippets. Also a red silk sash that went round the body and tied on the left side with a double bow with tassels.”

Can you not see one of those hairy old bears peering out of his furs, vain in scarlet sash and tassels, and with his vast feet planted on the dashboard? What were on his fore paws? double-pegged mittens, leather gauntlets, fur gloves, wristlets, and muffettees?

Mr. Twining declared that the skill of American drivers equalled that of English coachmen, though they had little of the smart appearance of the latter, “neither having the hat worn on one side, nor greatcoat, nor boots, but wearing coarse blue jackets, worsted stockings, and thick shoes.”

A traveller calling himself a Citizen of the World, writing in 1829, noted with pleasure that the drivers on American coaches neither asked for nor took a fee, but simply wished the passengers a polite good morning. Other Englishmen greeted this fact with approval. Mr. Miner tells us “tipping” was unknown—which was so customary, indeed so imperative, in England. Sometimes travellers who went frequently over the same route would make a gift to the driver.

The custom of “shouldering,” which was for the coachman to take the fare of a way-passenger—one who did not register or start at the booking-office—and pocket it without making any return to the coach agent or proprietor, was universal in England. Some coach companies suffered much by it, and it was a tidy bit of profit to the unscrupulous coachman. Shouldering was common also in the new world, and called by the same name. There were no “spotters” on coaching lines as on street railways.

As in every trade, profession, or calling, stage-coaching had a vocabulary—call it coaching slang if you will. Among English coachmen “skidding” was checking with a shoe or drag or “skid-pan” the wheels of the coach when going down hill, thus preventing them from revolving, and slackening the progress of the coach. “Fanning” the horses was, in coachman’s tongue, whipping them; “towelling” was flogging them; and “chopping” the cruel practice of hitting the horse on the thigh with the whip. “Pointing” was hitting the wheeler with the point of the whip. A “draw” was a blow at the leader. If the thong of the whip lapped round any part of the harness, it was called “having a bite.” “Throat-lashing” was another term.

View of Middletown, Connecticut.

Another and expressive use of the word bite was to indicate a narrow strip of gravel or broken stone on the near side of a winding road on a steep hill. The additional friction on the wheel on one side made a natural drag or brake, while the wheels of the ascending coach did not touch it.

The drivers on local lines grew to be on terms of most friendly intimacy with dwellers along the route. They bore messages, brought news, carried letters and packages, transacted exchange, and did all kinds of shopping at the citywards end of the route. An old coach-driver in Ayer, Massachusetts, told me with much pride that he always bought bonnets in Boston for all the women along his route who could not go to town; and that often in the spring the bandboxes were piled high on the top of his coach; that he never bought two alike, and that there wasn’t another driver on the road that the women would trust to perform this important duty save himself.

The great bell-crowned hat which the driver wore in summer on lines leaving Boston often was crammed with papers and valuables, and one of the rules of the Eastern Stage Company at one time was, “No driver shall carry anything except in his pocket.” It is said many of the drivers grew bald from the constant weight on their heads.

The constant imbibing of ale, brandy, and rum-and-milk by English coachmen at coaching inns was echoed in America by drivers at every tavern at which the stage-coach stopped. The driver was urged to drink by coach passengers who had far better have implored him not to drink. Many an old driver showed by the benignant purple glow of his nose that the importunities of the travellers had been duly silenced by more than ample hard cider, gin, and New England rum.

A great day on the coaches was when schoolboys and college boys went home on their vacations. The tops of the coaches were filled with their square boxes, which packed like cord-wood. On these boxes and within the coach swarmed the boys, pea-shooters in hand. A favorite target was the pike-keeper at the toll-gate, and those who left the coach first fared worst. Our boys have but a feeble imitation of these good times when they riot into a railway car together for a few hours of hurried travel to their city homes.

The stage-drivers were universally kind and careful of all children placed under their charge; even young children, boys and girls, were intrusted to their care.

One old gentleman tells me that in the days of his youth he rode by stage-coach to and from school, and so strong was his longing for a seafaring life, with such a flavor of salt water and tar did he englamour every unusual event, that it was inevitable with the imaginativeness of a child he should compare this trip by stage to a sea voyage; the roads and fields he mentally termed the ocean, the driver was the captain, the inside of the coach the cabin, the top the deck, and so on. He was honored by having a seat with the driver; and as the day waned, and the ship came to anchor, and all disembarked for supper at a stage tavern, he was further honored by eating supper with the driver and being treated to a glass of toddy. After the coach was again under way the driver had some tardy compunctions that the toddy had been rather strong drink for a growing boy, and said plainly that he feared the young traveller felt the liquor and might tumble from his high seat. He was not reassured when the boy answered dreamily, “Never mind, I can swim.” After glancing sharply at him, the driver stopped his horses, and ignominiously forced the boy to descend and make the rest of the journey inside the coach.

Nothing is more marked than the changes in travelling-bags and trunks from those of stage-coach days. When our ancestors crossed the ocean they transported their belongings in wooden chests—common sea-chests and chests of carved wood. I have seen no mention of trunks in any old colonial inventories, though trunks existed and are named by Shakespere. These old trunks were metal coffers, and usually small. When Judge Sewall went to England in 1690, he bought trunks for his little daughters—trunks of leather or hide with their initials studded in metal nails. This shape of trunk lasted till the days of the railroad. Nearly all old families have one or more of these old trunks in their garrets. They were stout enough of frame, and heavy enough of frame to have lasted in larger numbers, and for centuries, but their heavy deerskin or pigskin covering often grew sorely offensive through harboring moths; and as they held but little, and were very heavy, they were of no use for a modern wardrobe. Their long narrow forms, however, were seen laden on every stage-coach, in company with carpet bags and leather sacks, and the schoolboy who owned one was a proud fellow.

An ancient travelling bag is shown on page 333. It is of a heavy woollen homespun stuff ribbed like corduroy, mounted with green leather bindings, straps, handles, etc. It is shaped like a mail-bag, and the straps laced through large eyelet holes. This bag is believed by its owners to have held the possessions of John Carver on the Mayflower.

Deer’s Hide and Pigskin Trunks.

Not only were stage-drivers respected by all persons in every community, but they had a high idea of their own dignity and of the importance of their calling. Little Jack Mendum, who drove the Salem mail-coach, did not deem it an exaggeration of his position when he roared out angrily in answer to a hungry passenger who kept urging him to drive faster, “When I drive this coach I am the whole United States of America.”

One coachman who drove from Boston to Hartford was deeply tanned by summer suns and winter winds, and his mates spoke to each other of him as Black Ben. An English traveller, bustling out of the coach office with importance, shouted out: “I and my people want to go with Black Ben; are you the coachman they call Black Ben?” “Blackguards call me Black Ben,” was the answer, “but gentlemen call me Mr. Jarvis.”

The list of the coach-drivers employed by the Eastern Stage Company still exists, and has been printed by Mr. Rantoul. From it we learn that coach-driving went by families—it was an hereditary calling. Many families had two sons in this work, there were four Potter brothers, three Ackermans, and three Annables, all coachmen. Their names were often curious, Moses Caney, John Foss, Perley Annable, Eppes Potter, Ben Savory, Fortune Tozzer.

Mr. Miner writes thus of stage-terms and stage-horses:—

“Every horse had a name. It was ‘Git up, Jo; gwan, boys or gals; you are shirky, Bill; you want touching up, Ben; if you don’t do better, Ben, I’ll swap you for a mule.’ All kinds of expressions. Some drivers would fret a team to death, while others would get over the road and you would never hear hardly a loud word to the team. It was just as drivers themselves were constituted. All kinds of horses were used in a stage team, runaways, kickers, biters, and all kinds of tricksters. If the owners could not manage them they went on stage teams, and did good work, and never died. They were seldom sick, as they were well-fed and groomed, and had quick time and short trips. We had some fine teams of matched horses, especially on the Connecticut River roads, which would have sold for seven hundred to a thousand dollars a pair. The horses were usually what were termed native horses, large, full of muscle and gimp, of English descent.”

It was the testimony of John Lambert, an English gentleman who travelled here in the early years of this century, that the horses used on coaches in all settled parts of the United States were as good as English coach-horses.

It serves to show with force the pride and vanity of coach owners and drivers to be told that on the Boston and Salem line the coachmen sometimes attached false sweeping tails to the horses, to dress them up as it were and put on a good appearance—this is ante- if not anti-docking days.

Elaborate rules for coach-driving are given in old-time and modern manuals of coaching. Mr. Fairman Rogers’s descriptions are the plainest. Mr. Miner tells very simply of the old modes of driving in his day:—

“On four-horse teams were four reins. The near wheel-horse rein came under the little finger of left hand, the leader over the next finger. The off wheel-horse rein over third finger, right hand, leader over first finger. Six horses would require two more reins, and one more finger on each hand. Some drivers would wear mittens, and have one rein over and one under the fingers. These among good reinsmen were called Dummies or old Farmers. The whip was carried in the right hand, horizontally pointing to the left, toward the ground, not as pictured at the present day. A good driver who was interested in his team always sat up straight, and kept his reins and whip in a stylish manner. He talked to his horses as he would to a person. Every horse knew him; they knew him by his voice whether they were late for cars or early, and just where to make up time if late. A driver of this kind always had a good team, able to respond under all conditions.”

Even the whip of good drivers was of regulation size. The rule of perfection was that it should be five feet one and one-half inches from butt to holder and twelve feet five inches long from holder to end of point of lash—so it was an imposing machine.

On summer routes in the mountains of New Hampshire the stage-driver lingered long. Over the backbone of Vermont he guides in our own day a few rusty coaches.

Among the popular stage-drivers of the New Hampshire mountains before the advent of frequent railroads, were Charles Sanborn, of Pittsfield, who drove between Centre Harbor and West Ossipee; and H. P. Marden, who drove between Plymouth and the Profile House, White Mountains, during the summer months; and James F. Langdon, of Plymouth,—the three being among the last to give up the reins and the whip, when called to that far-away country “from whence no traveller returns.” In 1861, Mr. Sanborn drove between Centre Harbor and North Conway, a distance of thirty-five miles. He drove over that route eleven years, at first requiring but forty horses, while in 1872 no less than one hundred and twenty were in constant use, besides a large number of coaches, wagons, and sleighs. On one of his round trips, Mr. Sanborn took three hundred and fifty dollars in passenger fares alone, while the express business was proportionately large. Of course all this seems small to those who know little of the days before railroads ran by every man’s dooryard, but those who have “staged it” in the old times will understand what a busy time the driver on such a route must have had. Mr. Sanborn was over six feet in height and of Herculean frame, his broad shoulders and sturdy gait betokening a strength which gave his passengers the greatest confidence in his ability to carry them safely through any accident. He seldom lost his temper, even under the most trying circumstances, and was a jolly man withal. Major Lewis Downing of Concord tells me that on his route Sanborn had the good-will of every one, and in Pittsfield, where was his home, he was highly esteemed for his sterling character and strict integrity.

In England the coachmen and coaches had an Annual Parade, a coaching-day, upon the Royal Birthday, when coach-horses, coachmen, and guards all were in gala attire. In America similar annual meetings were held in many vicinities. In Concord, New Hampshire, which was a great coaching centre, an annual coaching parade was given in the afternoon and a “Stagemen’s Ball” in the evening. “Knights of the whip” from New Hampshire and neighboring states attended this festival. The ball was held in the celebrated Grecian Hall—celebrated for its spring floor—which was built over the open carriage-houses and woodsheds attached to the Eagle Coffee-house, called now the Eagle Hotel. This dancing hall, built in 1827, took its name from the style of its architecture. At one end was a great painting of the battle of New Orleans, with Jackson on horseback. It was the rallying-point for all great occasions,—caucuses, conventions, concerts, even a six weeks’ theatrical season.

Political economists solve the problem of a sudden loss of one trade by saying that others can easily be found. But it is difficult for a man learned in one handicraft to become proficient in others; and it is most difficult for the old or even middle-aged to learn a new trade.

No more melancholy example of an entire class of workmen deprived of work and subsistence through no fault of their own can be found than in these old coachmen, especially in England. Their work left them with astonishing rapidity, and they refused to realize the fact that their occupation was going out of existence, and that railroads would supersede coaches. In England the employment of the drivers of coaches on the railroads was almost unknown; they ended their days as humble workers in stables or as omnibus drivers, or, worse still, upon carts working on the road; sorry lives compared to the cheery work on a coach. A few took to farming, and made pretty poor work of it.

In America, especially in New England if they were young and strong and quick-witted enough to read coming events and adjust themselves early in the day to altered conditions, they obtained positions on the railroads, as brakemen, conductors, ticket-sellers, express-agents, depot-masters, never as engineers—driving horses does not fit a man to drive an engine. Often these brakemen and conductors advanced in position as the railroads grew. It was not unusual a decade ago in the obituary notices of men who had acquired wealth through the railways, to read that these men had in early life been stage-drivers; but they were usually men who had amassed some capital before the era of the railroad, or very young stage-drivers when steam carriage came.

Benjamin Pierce Cheney, one of the wealthiest men of Boston, an owner of vast railroad properties, founder of the rich Cheney Express Company, chief owner of the American Express Company, one of the Wells-Fargo Company, one of the builders of the Northern Pacific and other great Western railroads, began his business life a strong boy of seventeen driving the coach from Exeter, New Hampshire, to Nashua. For six years he drove fifty miles every day; then he became stage agent, and agent for the Lowell and Nashua Railroad, then railroad owner. Chester W. Chapin (afterwards president of the Boston and Albany Railroad) ran a stage line between Springfield and Hartford. The early members of the firm which formed Harnden’s Express were nearly all connected with stage-coach lines.

Certainly much consideration was shown the old employees of the stage roads.

It was said by an old coachman of the Eastern Stage Company that all its men were given positions on the railroads if so desired; “All who wished had something to do,” and facilities were given them also to benefit by the new railroads. For instance, after the steam cars were running between Salem and Boston the stage-drivers from Portsmouth and other towns were given free passes on the railroad. They could thus go to Boston and transact their old “errand-business,” from which they had so much profit. The fast-growing express companies of Harnden and Adams also employed many of the old workers on the stage-coach lines. Some resisted the new mode of travel. Major Shaw of Salem threatened to ruin the railroad with a new opposition stage line, but Americans in general have been ever quicker to accept changes and innovations than the English. They were more “uptaking,” as the Scotch say,—that is, quicker to perceive, accept, and adopt; we breathe in that trait with the air of the new world; so American coach employees accepted the railroad and profited by it.

CHAPTER XVI

Roger Mowry’s Tavern was the first one established in the town of Providence. It escaped destruction in King Philip’s War, when nearly all the town was burned, and stood till the present day. When a coach started out from that old tavern, it passed the burying ground and a dense growth of barberry bushes which grew along the roadside. There seems to have been, in many places, a suspicion of uncanny reputation connected with barberry bushes. In one spot a dense group of bushes was said to harbor a vast snake; in another it shaded an Indian’s grave; a third concealed a ghost. The barberry was not a native of America; it is an immigrant, and has the further ill name of blasting any wheat near which it is planted. The grewsome growth of barberry bushes near Mowry’s Tavern was the scene of the first serious crime of the settlement of Providence Plantations. The town carpenter, a thrifty and much respected young man named Clauson, much beloved by Roger Williams, was found dying one winter morning in 1660 near “a clump of barberry bushes” at the parting of the paths “near Roger Mowry’s Tavern.” His head was cloven open with an axe, and the dying man accused a neighbor named Herndon of being the instigator of the crime; and with a spirit never learned from his old master, the gentle Williams, he left a terrible curse upon the children and children’s children of John Herndon, that they should ever “be marked with split chins and be haunted by barberry bushes.” An Indian named Wanmanitt was arrested for having done this terrible deed, and was locked up in the Mowry Tavern. He was probably executed for it, though the town records only contain a preliminary story of his trial. With bills for interpreters and for a boat and guard and powder and shot and liquor, all to go with the prisoner to Newport jail, the Indian murderer vanishes down the bay out of history. John Herndon lived on peacefully for many years, branded, doubtless, in the minds of many; but there is no record that the futile imprecation of the dying man ever was fulfilled.

As the stage-coach runs along through old Narragansett, it comes to another scene of crime, of horrible crime and horrible punishment—that of hanging in chains. This demoralizing sight was almost unknown in America. You can scarcely read a tale, a history of old English life, without hearing of men “hanging in chains.” That most popular of children’s books, The Fairchild Family, has a typical English scene, wherein the solemn English father, in order to make his children love each other the more, takes them through a lonely wood to see the body of a man hanging in chains on a gibbet, a horrible and revolting sight. Travellers on the Portsmouth Road in England, after the year 1786, passed at Hind Head a gibbet with three men swinging in chains, three barbarous murderers of an unknown sailor—not a pleasant outlook for tired riders on the coach. By the old South Ferry in Narragansett, a man was murdered by a fellow-traveller. At the inn where they had rested the last night one of them spent on this earth, a woman had dressed his hair, and she noted a curious white lock which grew like our artist Whistler’s in a thick head of black hair. On this single identification was built a chain of evidence which ended in that unusual and terrible sight in the new world, the body of a criminal hanging in chains. It swung there till the poor bones dropped to the earth, and finally the great chains rusted apart. Then schoolboys took the heavy links which had bound a sight they had not seen, and with equal bravado and apprehension cracked open their winter store of hickory nuts and butternuts with the last emblem of an obsolete law.

Not far from this scene is a crossroads which could be viewed from the stage-coach, but I trust no traveller saw there the execution of a law as obsolete and as barbaric as hanging in chains.

For on this crossroads took place several of those eccentric, ridiculous performances known as “shift-marriages.” Any widow, about to be married again, could be free from all debts of her dead husband’s contracting by being married at the crossroads, “clad only in her shift.” Sometimes she was enjoined to cross the King’s Highway four times thus scantily clad.

George Hazard, Justice, made entry in the town book of South Kingston, Rhode Island, that Abigail Calverwell on the 22d of February, 1719, was taken in marriage “after she had gone four times across the highway in only her shift and hair low and no other clothing.” Think of this poor creature, on this winter’s night, going through such an ordeal. Another Narragansett widow, Jemima Hill, was married at midnight “where four roads meet,” clad only in her shift. Another entry in a town record-book specifies that the bride had “no other clothing but shifting or smock.” Let me hasten to add that these marriages were not peculiar to Rhode Island; they took place in many of the colonies, certainly in Pennsylvania and in all the New England states.

As the old Narragansett coach sped on through Connecticut, it passed lonely spots which were noted for other sad tales and traditions, but were ever of keen interest to all passers-by. For at the crossroads “where four roads meet,” were buried suicides, with a stake thrust through the heart. This was a cruel old English and Dutch law. We learn from Judge Sewall all of the public obloquy and hatred of a suicide in Massachusetts. One poor fellow found dead was buried in disgrace under a pile of stones at a Connecticut crossroads, but the brand of self-destruction was taken from him at a later date, when much evidence was secured that he was murdered.

If our Narragansett coach went over the Ridge Hill, the driver surely pointed out the spot where a lover once hid his coach and horses till there rode up from a bridle-path near by the beauty of Narragansett, “Unhappy Hannah Robinson,” who jumped from her horse into the coach and drove off headlong to Providence to be married. An elopement should end happily, but the adjective ever attached to her name tells the tale of disappointment, and it was not many years ere she was borne back, deserted and dying, lying on a horse-litter, to the spacious old home of her childhood, which is still standing. And one day down this road there came hotly lashing his horses a gay young fellow driving tandem a pair of Narragansett pacers, and he scarcely halted at the tavern as he asked for the home and whereabouts of the parson. But the tavern loungers peeped under the chariot-hood and saw a beautiful blushing girl, and they stared at a vast, yawning, empty portmanteau, strapped by a single handle to the chariot’s back. And soon two angry young men, the bride’s brothers, rode up after the elopers, who had been tracked by the articles of the bride’s hastily gathered outfit which had been strewn from the open portmanteau along the road in the lovers’ hasty flight. Who that rides on a railway car ever hears anything about elopements or such romances! Parson Flagg, of Chester, Vermont, made his home a sort of Yankee Gretna Green; the old stage-drivers could tell plenty of stories of elopers on saddle and pillion who rode to his door.

Midsummer along the Pike.

The traveller by the coach learned constant lessons from that great teacher, Nature. Even if he were city bred he grew to know, as he saw them, the various duties of country life, the round of work on the farm, the succession of crops, the names of grains, and he knew each grain and grass when he saw it, which few of city life do now. He saw the timid flight of wild creatures, rabbits, woodchucks, squirrels, sometimes a wily fox. My father once, riding on a stage-coach in Vermont, chased down a mountain road a young deer that ran, bewildered, before its terrible pursuer. At night the traveller heard strange sounds, owls and a smothered snarl as the coach entered the woods—a catamount perhaps. He heard the singing birds of spring and noted the game-birds of autumn; and in winter they could watch the broad and beautiful flight of the crows, free in snowy woods and fields from the rivalry of all fellow feathered creatures. He saw the procession of wild flowers, though he, perhaps, did not consciously heed them, and he knew the trees by name. The stage-driver showed his passengers “the biggest ellum in the county,” and “the best grove of sugar-maples in the state.” He pointed out a lovely vista of white birches as “the purtiest grove o’ birch on the road,” and there was a dense grove of mulberry trees, the sole survivors of silk-worm culture in which were buried so many hours and years of hard labor, so much hard-earned capital, so many feverish hopes. And towering a giant among lesser brothers, a glorious pine tree still showing the mark of the broad arrow of the King, chosen to be a mast for his great ships, but living long after he was dead and his ships were sunken and rotten, living to be a king itself in a republican land.

A Vista of White Birches.

The foot-farer, trudging along the outskirts of the village, is often shut out by close stone or board barriers from any sight of the flowering country gardens, the luxuriance of whose blossoming is promised by the heads of the tall hollyhocks that bend over and nod pleasantly to him; but the traveller on the coach could see into these old gardens, could feast his eyes on all the glorious tangle of larkspur and phlox, of tiger lilies and candytuft, of snowballs and lilacs, of marigolds and asters, each season outdoing the other in brilliant bloom.

And what odors were wafted out from those gardens! What sweetness came from the lilacs and deutzias and syringas; from clove-pinks and spice bush and honeysuckles; how weird was the anise-like scent of the fraxinella or dittany; and how often all were stifled by the box, breathing, says Holmes, the fragrance of eternity! The great botanist Linnæus grouped the odors of plants and flowers into classes, of which three were pleasing perfumes. To these he gave the titles the aromatic, the fragrant, the ambrosial—our stage-coach traveller had them all three.

From the fields came the scent of flowering buckwheat and mellifluous clover, and later of new-mown hay, sometimes varied by the tonic breath of the salt hay on the sea marshes. The orchards wafted the perfumes from apple blossoms, and from the pure blooms of cherry and plum and pear; in the woods the beautiful wild cherries equalled their domestic sisters.

The Hollyhocks’ Promise.

How sweet, how healthful, were the cool depths of the pine woods, how clean the hemlock, spruce, fir, pine, and juniper, and how sweet and balsamic their united perfume. And from the woods and roadsides such varied sweetness! The faint hint of perfume from the hidden arbutus in early spring, and the violet; the azalea truly ambrosial with its pure honey-smell; the intense cloying clethra with the strange odor of its bruised foliage; the meadowsweet; the strong perfume of the barberry; and freshest, purest, best of all, the bayberry throwing off balm from every leaf and berry. Even in the late autumn the scent of the dying brakes and ferns were as beloved by the country-lover as the fresh smell of the upturned earth in the spring after the farmer’s plough, or the scent of burning brush.

The Cool Depths of the Pine Woods.

Fruit odors came too to the happy traveller, the faint scent of strawberries, the wild strawberry the most spicy of all, and later of the dying strawberry leaves; even the strong and pungent onions are far from offensive in the open air; while the rich fruity smell of great heaps of ripe apples in the orchards is carried farther by the acid vapors from the cider mills, which tempt the driver to stop and let all taste new apple-juice.

In the days of the stage-coach we had on our summer journeys all these delights, the scents of the wood, the field, the garden; we had the genial sunlight, the fresh air of mountain, plain, and sea; and all the wild and beautiful sights which made the proper time for travel—the summer—truly joyful. Now we may enjoy a place when we get there, but we have a poor substitute for the coach for the actual travelling—a dirty railway car heated almost to tinder by the sun, with close foul air (and the better the car the fouler and closer the air) filled, if we try to have fresh air, with black smoke and cinders; clattering and noisy ever, with occasional louder-shrieking whistles and bells, and sometimes a horrible tunnel—it has but one redeeming quality, its speed, for thereby the journey is shortened.

Taylor’s Tavern. 1777, Danbury, Connecticut.

Cheerful friends on the old roads were the milestones and guideposts. Milestones had an assured position in social life, a dignified standing. It would be told of a road as a great honor and distinction, and told fitly in capitalized sentences thus, “This Elegant road is fully Set with well-cut Milestones.” A few of the old provincial milestones remain, and put us closely in touch with the past. In Governor Hutchinson’s day milestones were set on all the post-roads throughout Massachusetts. Several of these are still standing; one is in Worcester, in the heart of the city, marked “42 Mls. to Boston, 50 Mls. to Springfield, 1771.” Another is in Sutton. It is five feet high and nearly three feet wide. It is marked “48 mls. to Boston. B. W.” The letters B. W. stand for Bartholomew Woodbury, a genial tavern-keeper of Sutton. It shows a custom which obtained at that date. It was deemed most advantageous to a tavern to have a milestone in front of it. Possibly the tale of the stone shown in its lettering urged wayworn travellers to halt and rest within the welcoming door. Bartholomew Woodbury’s Tavern was a few rods from the spot marked for the stone, but the government permitted him to set this stone by his doorside, at his own expense, beside the great horse-block. Tavern-keeper and tavern are gone, and the old road sees few travellers. Occasionally some passer-by, inquisitive like myself of the presence of the old stone, will halt as did the traveller of old, and pull away the curtain of vines, and read the lettering of this gravestone of the old Woodbury Tavern.