Or let us suppose, that haply you allow your frail carcass to go
full drive against his sturdiness, when lo!--in beautiful illustration
of those doctrines in projectiles, that relate to the concussion of
moving bodies--you fly off at an angle "right slick" into the middle of
the carriage-way; whence a question of some interest presently arises,
whether you will please to be run over by a short or a long stage.--But
to return. Who hesitates to make way for a coalheaver? As for their
drays--as _consecutive_ a species of vehicles as a body can be stopped
by--every one knows they make way for themselves.
I one Sunday met a party of my favourites in St. Paul's cathedral.
They seemed to view with becoming respect and even awe that splendid
place; and they listened to and observed, with apparent profound
attention, the cathedral service. Yet I must confess my favourable
opinion of their grave looks was rather staggered by overhearing
afterwards one of them say to his neighbour, casting a look all round
the while, "My eyes, Tom, what lots o' _coals_ this here place would
hold." Perhaps the observation was meant in honour.
_Monthly Magazine_.
* * * * *
TRAVELLING FARE.
If you shut yourself up for some fifty hours or so in a mail-coach,
that keeps wheeling along at the rate of ten miles an hour, and
changes horses in half a minute, certainly, for obvious reasons, the
less you eat and drink the better; and perhaps a few hundred daily
drops of laudanum, or equivalent grains of opium, would be advisable,
so that the transit from London to Edinburgh might be performed in a
phantasma.
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