the question “How many gallons does Mr. Buckles’ great copper hold?”  The boy said he could not tell.  “No; I thought you could not,” was the reply.  Our worthy citizen had forgotten to give the dimensions of the copper, and went away rejoicing over the fact that he had puzzled the calculating boy!

He reminds me very much of a story one has heard in connection with our own professional experience.  A witness was called to prove an assault, which consisted in a man having been knocked down by a stone thrown at him.  The counsel was anxious to ascertain the size of the stone.  The witness said “do you want to know how big it was?”  “Yes,” said the counsel.  “The size do you mean?”  “Yes.”  “Well, it was biggish.”  “Well, I want you to tell me how big it was”!  “Well, sir, if you want me to tell you how big it was, I should think it was as big as a lump o’ chalk.”  Now, I think the gentleman who put the question about the copper, and the witness, must have been very nearly related.

When I arrived in the City, it became very important to me to know how I could get away from it.  I lived at Northampton.  Between Peterborough and Northampton there are now eleven trains a day.  When I came to Peterborough in 1833, and for some years afterwards, the only communication between the town of Northampton and the City of Peterborough was a one-horse carrier’s cart, which came twice a week, and I think the large proportion of its business consisted in carrying parcels from the Probate Office at Northampton to the Probate Office at Peterborough.  For coaches we were pretty well off.  Two mails ran through Peterborough, the Boston Coach, and the Coach to Hull.  We used to go shares with the town of Stamford with a London Coach.  One of our townsmen ran a coach to Stilton daily, where it joined the coach from Stamford.  At one time that coach carried the letter bag, and on one occasion it started without the bag.

There was a man known as “Old John Frisby,” who was not quite “all there,” and this man went after the coach with the letter bag, and overtook it at Stilton.  The poor man was under the impression that he had done the State a great service and thought he ought to receive a pension, and he daily expected it until his death.

The Mail Coaches were very comfortable for travelling in fine weather, and an eight or ten hours’ journey was very pleasant, providing you did not ride inside.  A journey to London and Edinburgh occupied two whole days and nights.  The expense of such a mode of travelling was very great, being five or six times as much as the ordinary first class railway fare.  Every fifty or sixty miles the Coachman would touch his hat and say, “I leave you here, sir,” which meant that you were to give him a fee.  The guard would do the same, and when your luggage was put up, the ostler came to you.  If you travelled post or in “a yellow and two,” as it was called, you had to pay 1s. 6d. a mile, beside the toll bars, and 3d. a mile for the post boy, as well as something more that he always expected.  The 3d. a mile for the post boy, as his regular fee, is about equal to the highest first class railway fare that is paid on any railway in the country.

Just conceive what a change there is in the communication and you do not wonder that the introduction of the railway system has made a stationary nation into a nation of travellers.  After a time things did improve a little.  The Birmingham Railway was made at considerable cost.  When I wanted to go to Northampton, for many years I had to get up at six o’clock in the morning, hire a gig to go to Thrapston, where I caught the Cambridge coach, which ran in connection with the coach at Oxford.  It cost about £4 to go home and come back again.  When the Blisworth railway was opened, a coach was set up from Lynn to Blisworth six days in the week.  This was a great convenience, and was very well supported.  There were two coachmen.  One was very grave and serious and the other light and frivolous.  Everybody knew them very well indeed.  It was very amusing to travel with them.

At last, the Northampton Railway was projected, and it was plain to those men that their reign was coming to an end; but they used to endeavour to convert you to the belief that it was far better for things to remain as they were.  The light and frivolous one used to sing a song in praise of the “Tally Ho” Coach.  I remember the chorus was:

Let the steam pot hiss
   Until it is hot.
Give me the speed of
   The Tally-ho trot!

The other coachman used to appeal to your fears, and say how dreadful it was when a railway accident occurred—“when an accident occurred to the coach—there you are!  Just fancy an accident at 20 or 30 miles an hour; when that happens, where are you?”

Well, we have survived it, and I am not sure that he was accurate in his per centage of those injured in coach and railway accidents.  I have known some very fatal and distressing accidents bearing a very large proportion of injuries and deaths to those in the coach.  I may mention that the Lynn coach of Messrs. Hill was very good to take you to the sea, it was very hard work to get to the beach in these days.  I believe Skegness consisted of a single house.  The nearest place was Yarmouth, and Messrs. Hill’s car took you to Lynn, where you could join the Birmingham and Yarmouth mail.  I have never forgotten my first visit to Yarmouth when a boy.  From the Norwich Road you caught the first view of the sea.  As you enter Yarmouth now by rail you go in over the marshes, and the last two or three miles are by the side of muddy water, and you cannot see the sea until you get on the beach.  The contrast between the way by the old coach and by the rail is very striking, indeed.

In the year 1842 or 1843 it was rumoured that the London and North-Western Company were about to feel their way eastward, and the project for making the Peterborough and Northampton Railway was put into shape.  Our wildest dreams never expected a railway.  We had a coach, and that was quite a novelty.  The Bishop and Dean and Chapter had a good deal of property on the line, and strongly opposed the railway.  When the Bill came into the House of Lords it was, to our great delight, passed by a majority of One.  There is an anecdote of Lord Fitzwilliam, who was an opponent of the Bill.  That one day his Lordship was coming down by train, and in the same carriage was one of those gentlemen who knew everything.  This gentleman was giving to a friend a history of the line, and when passing Alwalton Lynch said: “That is the road to Milton Park, and do you know that Lord Fitzwilliam opposed the Bill because they would not make him a station there?”  A little further on the train stopped at Overton Station, and his Lordship got out.  Just as he was shutting the door he said to the gentleman: “That little anecdote which you just told your friend about that crossing is not true, and when you say anything more about it you may say that Lord Fitzwilliam told you so.”

The Northampton line was opened in 1845, and I remember being in the Cathedral when the first engine came down.  It stopped at the end of the Fair Meadow, for the Dean and Chapter prevented the line being brought any nearer the town, as they would not have Bridge Fair interfered with.  The engine was only about one-third the size of what they are now, but when it blew off steam people said they would never be able to hear anything in the Cathedral!  Yet now no notice is taken of what was looked upon then as a deafening noise.

We had next the London and York Railway, which then crossed the Thorpe Road near where the old mill