SIR,--The proposal to extend the Cab Radius to five miles from Charing
Cross is good in its way, but it does not go far enough. My idea is
that the cheap cab-fare should include any place in the Home Counties.
Cabmen should also be prevented by law from refusing to take a person,
say, from Piccadilly to St. Albans, on the plea that their horse
"could not do the distance." All assertions of that kind should be
punished as perjury. Cabmen are notoriously untruthful. Why should
not Cab Proprietors, too, be obliged to keep relays of horses at
convenient spots on all the main roads out of Town in case a horse
really proves unequal to going fifteen miles or so into the country,
in addition to a hard day's work in London?--Yours unselfishly,
_St. Albans_. NORTHWARD HO!
SIR,--Why _will_ people libel the Suburbs, and keep on describing
them as dull? I am sure that a place which, like the one I write
from, contains a Lawn Tennis Club (entrance into which we keep _very_
select), a Circulating Library, where all the new books of two
years' back are obtainable without much delay, a couple of handsome
and ascetic young Curates, and a public Park, capable of holding
twenty-six perambulators and as many nursemaids at one and the same
time, can only fitly be described as an Elysium. Still, we _should_ be
grateful for better facilities for getting away from its delights now
and then, and this proposal to extend the Cab Radius has the warmest
support of Yours,