Walks and talks of an American farmer in England (Part 2 of 2)

A STAGE-COACH RIDE.—CONVERSATION WITH THE COACHMAN.—A FREE-TRADER.—AMERICAN AND ENGLISH WOMEN.—FAIR PLAY.—WOMAN’S RIGHTS.—SOCIAL DIFFERENCES.—FRENCHMEN.—NATIONAL VANITIES.—DEMOCRACY.—FREE TRADE.—RETALIATION.—ARISTOCRACY.—NATURAL LAWS.—THE LAW OF LOVE.—FRATERNITY.

In the afternoon, C. went to visit some antiquities of the neighbourhood, and my brother and I were invited by our host to visit a large farm on the border of Monmouthshire. We were to go the first ten miles by stage-coach. On the coach-top there were two women, who sat with some children and the guard in the rear, upon seats over what is the boot of our coaches. Forward, there was a small, sickly-looking man, his face covered with a close-cropped, grayish beard, his right arm hanging, as it seemed, lifeless, and an old-fashioned travelling-cap upon his head. He seemed to be a foreigner, and, without speaking, but with courteous manner, made room for my friends at his side. I was seated on the box, between the coachman and another passenger. The former was a staid, sober man, neatly, but no way peculiarly, dressed; talking, as if well posted up, but without any self-conceit, on matters that he had a fancy for—to wit: horses, racing, boxing, the crops on the roadside, the weather, female beauty, and woman’s rights, but perfectly mum and uncomprehending beyond these. He drove in the most accomplished and gentlemanlike style—never with a hasty movement, or a show of exertion, or even attention—yet never losing his feel of every horse’s mouth, and having each in such perfect command, and guiding and governing them all so easily and gracefully, that it seemed as if the reins were a part of him and he moved them by instinct; just as a good helmsman will bring up his boat to “meet” a surging sea, without knowing it, and even when half asleep. He never lifted a whip from the socket, except to punish a horse for indulging in some trick, or for neglect to obey the signal of his voice, which was hardly ever more than a short chirrup—no whistling, shouting, and calling by name. The speed, with a heavy load, was excellent, averaging nearly eleven miles an hour.

The gentleman upon the box, between whom and the coachman I was allowed to wedge myself, discovering that I was an American, put me many questions, intended to be hard, with regard to our country, which I answered as well as I could. He was a tall, well-dressed, reflective Englishman, slightly inclined to be sarcastic and supercilious, but studiously courteous in his manners, and speaking from half way down his throat, with a gasping utterance, as is a fashion with some clergymen and very elegant people here. He got at length, from more general conversation, into a discussion upon the character of women, and the customs of our two countries with regard to them. He thought our way of treating women was an unreasonable petting of them, and the tendency of it must be to spoil them, make them mere children, delicacies, unfit to encounter in a manly way the inevitable trials of life, and unworthy of true respect. He thought, too, our customs, with regard to them, were absurd and unjust; and told how a friend of his had been obliged to lose his seat in a stage-coach and go outside, in a rainy day, because a girl that was picked up on the road wanted it. His friend had been rudely treated because he hesitated to comply with this absurd demand; and he concluded his account of the affair by saying, that however distinguished for gallantry my countrymen might become by such tyranny, he could only see in it, as he did in many other American transactions, a want of that stern regard for justice for which, he trusted, Englishmen would ever be known. I could hardly understand his deduction from the story; for it seemed to me quite right, if not what he called “just,” that if one of them must have been exposed to the inclemency of the weather, it should have been the man, as probably best able to bear it. But, rather doubting if I had understood him, I replied, half ironically, half sincerely, that I would confess that I questioned if the mass of my countrymen were not deficient in this respect to the educated middle class of England.

He wondered that I should confine the inherent love of justice and truth to any class of Englishmen, yet did not deny that, among the nobility, it might seem to have degenerated a great deal into a mere idolatry of the forms to which justice was reduced by law and custom. But among the lowest classes, he argued, we should find the real character of a people most naturally and unaffectedly manifested, and especially in the common forms of speech and popular proverbs and outcries. Spontaneous love of justice, and indignation at injustice was every where displayed by the lowest class in England, and nowhere else in the world would you hear the demand for fair play so continually. He had often noticed that, in any street tumult, the loudest shout was always—“HANDS OFF! FAIR PLAY!” It always pleased him and made him proud of his country when he heard it.

“Let me tell you under what circumstances I heard it, not long since—the only time I have as yet heard it in England,” I answered. “It was in the ‘Bull-ring’ at Ludlow, the other day, one woman accused another of cheating, and in return was called a liar. Just as we were passing, they came to blows, and hammered each other very severely. A crowd collected, and formed a ring about them in a moment. It was our impulse, with two or three other persons, of perhaps too weak a sense of justice, to rush in and part them; but the crowd were greatly enraged, and raised the cry, ‘Hands off! fair play!’ so that we were in danger of being rather roughly handled ourselves. They fought like tigers, till the blood ran freely. At length the hair of one of them fell over her face.”

“Tut—tut!” said the coachman.

“And as she tossed her head backwards, and tried to draw it off with one hand, she got a facer; and then, one, two, three!—down she went! ‘Fair play!’ shouted the crowd again, and caught up the victor and bore her off with a hurrah to a butcher’s shop. The fallen woman was picked up and lifted into a tinker’s cart; men and women crowded about her, and told her it was all along of her having her hair fall, and it was a foul blow, and better luck next time. One brought a comb, another a mug of water, and another a little black bottle. In a minute—”

“Time!” said the coachman, as if reminding his horses.

“In a minute she had her face washed; tobacco crowded up her nose to staunch the blood; her hair drawn tightly back, and knotted, and had taken a good pull at the bottle.”

“Up to time!” whispered coachee.

“And the last we saw of her, she was standing before the butcher’s shop, with her sleeves rolled up, sparring in a scientific style, and screaming, ‘Come on! come on! Give me fair play, and I’ll fight you. Oh! I’ll fight you! only give me fair play!’ and all the crowd were shouting, ‘Fair fight! fair fight! Come out! come out and give her fair fight!’”

“It must have been a nuisance—such a rabble; where were the police?”

“In America, all the men in sight would have been policemen, if necessary, to have parted them.”

“Don’t you like fair fighting, then,—you Americans?” asked the coachman.

“Why—we don’t like fighting at all among women. It is disgraceful! Surely the idea of women fighting so brutally is disgusting to you?”

“Disgusting? I don’t know that. There’s Joan of Arc, and Amazon, and other handsome heroines; they are not disgusting, are they? I tell you, sir, I do like a fair, stand-up fight, and, damme, sir, I don’t know, by your leave, why women have not the right to settle their quarrels that way as well as men.”

“The right—yes; and if they must fight, let it be a fair fight; but I would rather men would fight for them. Fighting!—a man could drive a coach as well, I suppose, or fell a tree as well after fighting as before; but a woman could not sooth a child, nor would she feel disposed to take tender care of one, I think, if her fighting propensities had been much cultivated—whether in fair fighting or foul.”

“Oh, you are quite right, sir, quite right,” said the gentleman on my left; “women should not be allowed to fight. But what application has it to my friend’s being turned out of his seat because a woman did not wish to get wet?”

“Why, I was thinking that if we sometimes show a less commanding instinct of justice in our customs towards women, as you have thought from that incident, we may also exhibit a more delicate sense of propriety and fitness, which, if it does not rest on an instinct of justice, certainly does on something nearly akin to it. You find no mob in America that would look on and see two women fight like that. But, indeed, you’d never see American women fighting so. If it is a disgrace to us that we have made our women unnaturally childlike, it is no honour to you that yours can be so unnaturally brutish.”

“But, my dear sir, that was a tinker’s wife!”

“So it was, and I should perhaps have confined the application to your lower classes; I certainly have never seen any want of true refinement among your well-bred ladies.”

“But they do tell strange tales of your fine ladies. I suppose you have seen the legs of pianos put in pantalettes?”

“Oh yes, frequently; and do you know—the other day, at the residence of the Honourable Mrs. ——”

“—— Hall? The family are on the Continent.”

“Yes; I did not see the ladies; but will you believe me, sir, their modesty is so great, that the arms of their chairs are all in muslin sleeves, as well as their piano—body, legs, and all—veiled like a Turk’s wife, so you would not know what it was.”

“Oh, to keep the dust off it—it must have been.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Ah! you mean that such was also the case with those you have seen in America?”

“Of course. It never occurred to me that they were covered for any other reason. I have no doubt that if your friend told you that they were, he was made the subject of a practical joke. If not, he kept worse company than I ever fell among when he was there; and it is as unfair for you to draw a general conclusion with regard to our ladies, from his experience in a vulgar family or two, as it would be for me to describe your ladies as coarse and brutal from the conduct of the tinker’s wife.”

“But tinkers’ wives would not be piano-forte performers, nor travellers in the inside of stage-coaches.”

“I don’t know that,” I replied; “a tinker’s wife in the United States is as likely to know how to play a piano-forte, as a tinker’s wife here is to know how to read her Bible, and would certainly be as likely to ride in the inside of a stage-coach as any one else; and your friend, if he had one for his vis-à-vis, might, very possibly, from her dress and general appearance, particularly from her general information and intelligence, have been led to apply the same standard in judging of her that he had been accustomed to use at home for females of his own rank in society: of course, judged in that way, it would be odd if he could not find something outré about her to make fun of.”

“How about stage-coachmen’s wives, sir?”

“I know a stage driver’s wife that has a piano, and can play it—at least her daughter can—admirably well. Her husband is colonel of a crack regiment of our yeomanry cavalry.”

The coachman turned and looked me very gravely in the face for a moment, just showing the tip of his tongue, and then raised his hand till his thumb pointed over his left shoulder.

The gentleman laughed, and said,

“He will be ‘His Excellency,’ your representative at the Court of St. James next, I suppose.”

“Perhaps so,” I answered, “for he has already represented his fellow-townsmen for two years in the Legislature of the State, and had the title of Honourable.”

“A stage-coachman, ’pon honour?”

“Yes.”

“What for a whip is he, sir?”

“I’ll tell you his story, as far as I know it,⁠[13] and what I don’t know I can guess at.

“He was an ostler once, then a lawyer’s boy, then a schoolmaster, then studied law and began to practice; then he speculated, made a fortune, and lost the greater part of it in a year; then he bought out a line of stage-coaches that were run over a mountain, and which was about to be given up because a railroad running around the mountains had been completed. He put the fares down, and works them in opposition to the railroad; and, as it is a tight match, he drives one coach himself, fifteen miles a-day, and back—six horses in hand; and I have seen them going down the mountain as hard as they could run, while he held his reins in one hand, not tauter than yours are now, and his cigar in the other, and called out to them, one after another, by name, to look out for themselves or they’ll break their necks, as if they had been a squad of school children.”

“Good God!” breathed the coachman.

“He is, withal, a church elder, and Super, Grand, Past Superior, Most Venerable Senior Patriarch of the Independent Order of X. Y. Z., and a variety of other things.”

The coachman whistled.

“But the lady, sir, of this gentleman—I should like to hear more of her,” asked my other companion.

“She is rather older than her husband—and, having had to work pretty hard all her life, has not had time to keep up with him, so she has the good sense to stay in the background a good deal; but his daughter, who is a beauty, accomplished, speaks French and German, and, as I told you, performs finely on the piano, was a regular belle in the last legislative session, and, they say, did a French Count the honour of rejecting his addresses.”

“Polkas, waltzes and sch—”

“Oh, no! I guess not—never, except with her younger sister, and in domestic circles: she is really too modest, and I suppose she would say it was against her religious principles.”

“She is religious, then?”

“Really so, I believe. I heard that the Count was likely to be greatly changed from her influence over him.”

“Have you a daughter, coachman?”

“Daughter! no! But I tell you, sir, I have the trimmest little King Charles’ slut you ever saw: black coat and tan wescoat, sir, with just a frill of white that you could cover with a sixpence. She won me five puns at the last Bristol show.”

“That’ll never connect you with a French Count.”

“Bah! I don’t want any thing to do with Frenchmen.”

“Why not?” said I. “I have seen but little of Frenchmen; what is it that you have found so bad about them?”

“I haven’t seen much of them either, and I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Oh—why, they are a scurvy lot, sir—live on frogs and pea-soup!—and—eh?—worship images, sir!—and—eh?—oh, they’ve no bottom, sir!—no strength they haven’t got, no pluck, sir. One Englishman’s worth a dozen of ’em, you know, sir.”

“You are a true Briton, coachman,” said the gentleman, laughing.

“We have some truer Britons on our side of the water; I’ll tell you what they sing.—

“‘One Yankee is good for two Englishmen, and two Englishmen can lick a dozen Frenchmen.’ ‘The British can whip all creation, and we can whip the British.’ That’s the talk of our ‘true Britons.’ Don’t you think they are full-blooded?”

“I must confess,” he answered, “that with all your suavity to women you are as stubborn and inconsistent in your prejudices as the worst of us. If the lady, whose seat my friend was obliged to pay for, had but been of a dark complexion—”

“Oh, now, do not let us discuss that subject—my friends and I only go as far as the Queen’s Head, which must be near by now; and if we begin on slavery we shall want the whole afternoon to get a good understanding of each other’s views. But what did you mean by your friend’s paying the lady’s fare? I did not understand that before.”

“What difference is it? He had paid for an inside seat, and, when he most needed it, was obliged to give it up to her.”

“Ah!—I think I understand you—that is the injustice that you feel.”

“Yes, sir, it is; it seems strange to me that you do not at once instinctively appreciate it.”

“Perhaps you are not aware that there is no difference in price on the outside and the inside of a stage-coach in America, and the only right which one can have to a seat is that of priority—a right which is made by custom with regard to men, but does not hold when a woman is in the case.”

“Indeed! is it so?”

“Yes.”

“I ask your pardon; indeed, I was not aware of it. But it is singular that it should be so; is not the privilege of protection from the weather worth paying for?”

“Sometimes it is; but in our climate it is not usually. Most men prefer, and would be willing, one time with another, to pay more for the elevated seat in the open air, than to be cramped up with eight others (for our coaches carry nine inside) in a close, crowded cabin. I myself cannot stand it for an hour, for it makes me sea-sick; and no matter what the weather, I should go outside. I would rather be frozen than suffocated. However, I suppose that our customs, as well as our legal institutions, do give the rich a little less advantage over the poor than yours.”

“And that’s just what institutions ought to do, if they do any thing,” put in the coachman; “what the devil else are they good for? It stands to reason: always dry off your weakest nag first, ’specially if he’s a little ailing. If you don’t, you’ll have trouble, you may depend, sir.”

“There is always danger in interfering with the natural laws of property,” remarked the gentleman. “It does not answer to put beggars on horseback, you know. All such things should be left to take their natural course. Property is the natural representative of intelligence and virtue, and all laws and customs that tend to the unnatural elevation or peculiar advantage of particular persons or classes, are mischievous.”

“I fully agree with you as to laws which obstruct the natural movement of property for merely individual aggrandizement. As a general rule, I believe all such attempts must fail of their real object. I don’t believe it possible, that such laws or restrictions should not be to the eventual disadvantage of both parties.”

“I declare I am glad to hear an American uttering such sentiments; but, indeed, they are irresistible—so simply and clearly right, that they seem, to one who has given any attention to the subject, altogether unworthy of discussion. But there is a still more evident justness, not to say policy, after one nation has opened her ports to free competition, that she should not be excluded or restrained from those of another. I do trust your nation begins to see how disgraceful to it is that false, absurd, unjust system of Protection, and will soon reciprocate our more generous policy, and let our commercial intercourse be governed by the natural law of trade. The simple law of nature should be the law of nations.”

“I am not so sure that Free Trade is a simple law of nature,” I answered. “If that is the natural law, which you were saying that we interfered with, in not allowing the rich man to separate himself as much as he chooses from the poor, then selfishness is the only reliable, natural guide, and the impulses of selfishness must not be thwarted by law. Might makes right—Every man for himself—that’s the law for you; quite a different thing from this you talk of—forgiving old scores and reciprocating the advantages you would give us, now that you find it much the most for your interest to do so, whether we reciprocate or not.”

“The first impulse of nature,” he replied, “is, every man for himself, perhaps; but the first true law of helping himself is to help another, to have a partner to labour with for a reciprocal advantage.”

“I always heard self-preservation was the first law of nature,” said the coachman.

“Exactly,” said I; “self-preservation—or, in fact, selfishness—that’s the first law,—not perfect reciprocity of good services, but the best payment we can get for our services. It’s the necessity of the buyer, not his generosity, that governs the payment. You have followed this natural law in your foreign policy as long as it would serve you, without regard to the injury it did us; now you find that a generous policy would be the most profitable policy, you preach reciprocity, and call that a natural law; but our people say—No! You have had the good—you must take the evil. If there’s any natural law, it is that by which we claim payment for the good we do you—atonement for the injury you have done us. At any rate, you must wait a few years till we have nursed our infant manufactures, not yet able to walk alone; when they are well established, we will, perhaps, give you the fair field and fair fight you are so fond of. For the fact is, no one expects Protection to be more than a temporary policy with us.”

“That’s fair,” said the coachman; “heavy weights and light weights can’t go into the ring together.”

“’Tisn’t heavy weights and light weights, but the champion of the world in full feather, calling out a youngster who’s never been in training. We acknowledge that you have the advantage of us, in some respects; but wait a bit, till we get in good trim, and then we will put our ingenuity and activity against your experience and muscle.”

“Meanwhile, you will take all the advantage that you can of your superior agricultural muscle, to undersell our farmers,” said the free-trader.

“No; you give it to us, because it is as much to your advantage as to ours.”

“Yes,” he answered, “we certainly do; and we advise you to do the same with regard to manufactures, honestly believing that it would be as much for your advantage as ours. It is absurd, for the sake of revenge, that you should pay your manufacturers a high price for what ours will furnish you at a lower one....”

“She’s the best in the lot,” said the coachman, interrupting us, to explain a severe cut he had given the near-wheeler; “the best in the lot, sir. Now she’s woke up, see how she throws her weight in. I’ve been working a coach, off and on, these fifteen years, and I don’t think I ever had a better bit of stuff before me; but you saw how she was lagging. She isn’t sulky—kind as a kitten—never takes offence—and she don’t mean she’s ailing; but sometimes she gets into a kind of a doze; forgets herself, and don’t hear me; dreamy like, I consider; thinking about the last stable, instead of the one she’s going to. I can’t break her of it. But she’s tough as steel—‘Lady Nimrod’ we calls her—after the old Nimrod, you know, sir, as writes for Bell’s Life. Ah, sir! but he can write, can’t he, and no chaff! You’ve read the Northern Tour; that distinguished old whip, you remember, that he tells of, he was my nuncle,—it’s in our blood,—he was a working on the Northern then.”

“I must beg leave,” said the gentleman, resuming our discussion, “to deny that we have been governed by such an exclusively selfish policy, in that matter of Free Trade and Protection, as you imputed to us. The principles of Free Trade are the natural laws of the universe, applicable at all times to all places. I fully believe that it would have been as profitable for our ancestors to have adopted them, as it is for us; and so far from ascribing their success to protection, I should say that it was in spite of Protection, and due only to indomitable energy and perseverance. And I feel no manner of doubt, that Protection, so far from encouraging your manufacturers, can only rest as an incubus upon their ingenuity and energy.”

“However your manufacturing success may have been affected by mere protection in itself, there can be no question that the great vantage ground that you have now in competing with us, is in the low cost of your manual labour. And this, if not due to technical protection, has certainly resulted, in a great degree, from that general policy in your past history, of sustaining privileged classes; from your constitution and laws and customs making, or, if you please, permitting, the accident of birth to give such advantages to some as it does. I do not consider property as the representative of industry and intelligence merely; it might be more truly defined as the representative of power, and often of the power of rascality and low cunning: the State, therefore, instead of giving artificial privileges to the rich, should, if to either class, give it to the poorer, because the weaker.”

“The State should grant no artificial distinctions; but there are certain privileges and distinctions which a man may naturally acquire, and the State should guarantee him permanent possession of these.”

“Granted, with the qualification that he must acquire them, and hold them in no way which, on the whole, shall be adverse to the greatest good of the greatest number. Now position, socially, is relative: if you elevate one man, you degrade others. Superior necessitates inferior. The aristocracy of the few makes necessary the peasantry of the many. Is that the Queen’s Head?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Our discussion must be interrupted, then.”

“Excuse me,” said our friend from behind us, reaching forward and putting his hand on my shoulder—“excuse me, but did I not hear you speaking of selfishness and revenge as first laws of nature, just now?”

“Something of the kind.”

“You will allow me to remind you that they are the natural laws of brutes, and of man in his first stages of progress from the brutal state. Was it not to a semi-barbarian people, incapable of being governed by a higher and better law, because they could not appreciate or have faith in it, that God permitted the law of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth?”

“Oh, certainly,” said I; “I would not seriously argue that we should govern ourselves by that law—I was speaking carelessly.”

“I knew you were, and that you would not wish to leave such an impression—”

“And may we not hope,” continued our friend, in his mild, serious way, “may we not hope that nations, like individuals, may take upon them a new and regenerated nature, and be governed by the higher law, ‘Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you?’ It was faith in this true law of wise and happy existence, both for God and man, which moved Jesus Christ, in the midst of disgrace, agony, and death, even in his last extremity, with fainting breath, to desire and labour for the salvation of those to whose ignorance of this law he owed all his suffering; and in this complete victory over the old law of revengeful payment, it should have passed away together with the brutal idea of God with which it had been necessarily connected; and now, to us, with a higher revelation of God as our Father, there should be a new and higher law.”

“Right,” said I, “and just what I would have been glad, if I had not got astray, to bring our argument to. It is not the law of nature, which is selfishness, but the law of God, which is love, that we should make the law of nations.”

“But, sir,” answered the free-trader, “is not the true law of nature identical with the law of God? It is in ignorance that men have hoped to benefit themselves by injuring others. Love is but a wise man’s selfishness. If I work rightly for myself, I cannot help but that you shall be benefited also.”

“The long and short of it is,” added our friend, “that while carefully remembering our individual responsibility, we should always be working together in love, as brothers, having a common inheritance; knowing that over all is a common Father, guiding and directing all, not only for the common good, but, with impartial love for each of his children, for the highest good of each individual. So must we, as nations, each people for itself, yet each for the common good of all, and knowing that only in the good of all can be the good of any. So only can any nation expect to prosper long, and so only shall the world prepare, too, for the universal kingdom of God—the coming of which may He graciously hasten!”

“Amen!” said the man who occupied the seat behind us, with my brother and our friend. From his moody expression and his position, his forehead resting on his hand, I had before thought him ill. I now turned again to look at him, and saw that either his eyes were very swollen and weak, or he had been weeping. “Excuse me for listening to you,” he said, speaking English very distinctly at first—“I have been much interest in your converse; I am a Frenchman,” and he raised his cap. At this the coachman turned short round and looked him in the face. “Will you permit me the honour of to take your hand?” Here he gave his left hand to each of us successively, and finally offered to do so with the coachman, who said:—

“I don’t say any thing behind a man’s back that I’m afraid to before his face, and I don’t like a Frenchman any way.”

“That is very good—very honest, which please me—coachman; so now I like you, you will make my friend—very good.”

“Tchiup!” answered the coachman, turning towards his horses, and the brown mare being again in a brown study, he snatched the whip and woke her up with a smart cut.

“I am made very happy,” the Frenchman continued, “very happy that you so do like the grand idea of the fraternity of nations; and for that good time, which shall surely come, I do, with you, make the prayer that it be quickly. Ah! gentlemen—with what—‘like many waters’—spake the God-voice through my people that word the other year, Fraternité! what you call the Brotherhood, and with it Liberty and Equality. Individuality, its rights; association, its love, its opportunity! Ah! gentlemen, ah! sir, I have not ever in England heard so good words as those you speaked. Ah! mine friend, I do feel you mine brother to be! Ah! mon cher ami, certainement—do you know your religion is my religion—Dieu est charité! Ah! mine friends, I very much communion have with you——And my country, in which was those good word spoken. Ah, mon Dieu! ah, mon Dieu! ma belle France! ma belle France! porquoi! porquoi!” and the poor little man broke down.

“Jerusalem! oh Jerusalem! that slayest thy prophets!” said our friend, drawing his head upon his shoulder, and then going on in a low tone expressive of sympathy and consolation, of which I could not hear the words.

“Ptshut!—Baby!” said the coachman.

“Baby?” said I. “Yes, ‘for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’”

“Just what I told you, sir.” He went on growling, not having understood me. “No bottom, sir, no bottom!... and a man can’t fight, you know, without bottom.... Pooh! regular women!... See the hair round his mouth!—snob!... How the devil does he ever get the soup into it?...——if I wouldn’t match the Queen’s Head bar-maid against the best man amongst them.... They may make a goodish brush at the start, you know, sir, but they can’t sweat it through, ... no, sir, they can not.... They are a bad lot, you may depend, sir—never can make a good fight.”

“Pshaw, man! there’s something else to be done in the world than fighting.”

“But a man isn’t worth much at any thing else if he can’t fight when he is put to it, if you please, sir.”

“Nonsense! there’s good stuff in plenty of men that never show fight—don’t you know that? But you might bet on this man’s being a fighter—look at his scars, and you see his right arm is gone—ten to one he lost it fighting.”

“Well, that does look some’at plucky—it’s a fact, sir—so-ho, lads—steady—whoo! Now then, Blazer! look alive!”

These last words were for the red-headed ostler of the Queen’s Arms. The four fresh horses with blankets over their harness stood waiting; Blazer looked most intensely alive, and in a marvellously short space of time the old team was unhitched and walking off unattended to the stable; my brother was saying a few kind parting words to the Frenchman, who answered that he trusted that they were representative of the sentiments of all the good American people; the free-trader handed me his card, saying that he observed that I had an agricultural taste—if I should be passing through and could find it convenient to call on him, though not in that line himself, he thought he could show me some things in the neighbourhood that would interest me. The coachman had forgotten us, and all about him, in a kind of doze, as he said, of the brown mare. Making an estimate, I guessed he was, with regard to the Queen’s Head bar-maid, of the exact height she was in her stockings, and the exact weight to which he could bring her if he could have the training of her for a month. His mind seemed totally abstracted as we pointed a shilling towards him; but he took it, mechanically touching his hat and saying, ‘Thankee, sir.’ The redoubtable damsel herself stood on the porch of the inn, looking poutingly at the coachman (or the Frenchman’s moustache)—not a dangerous person, to judge by her appearance, though she must have stood full six feet in her stout hob-nailed shoes, but with as good-natured and healthy a soul looking out of her great hazel eyes as the mildest pot of half-and-half she had ever honoured the Queen’s Head by drawing in its cellar.

The fresh horses were fastened to, and the guard had shouted “All right!” before we were all three fairly on the ground. Yet a moment longer Blazer held the pawing leaders, while the coachman, with a completely nonplussed expression, lighted a cigar that the Frenchman had given him; then, as we were buckling on our knapsacks, he drew taut his reins, and away they bounded, the Frenchman bending far over to kiss his hand to us, and the Englishman in a stately way lifting his hat.

“Adieu, mes amis, adieu!”

“God be with the brother, as surely he will.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”