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.
[Sidenote: _FOUR IN HAND._]
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.
[Sidenote: _THE RING—FEMININE._]
“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?”
[Sidenote: _SOCIAL DIFFERENCES._]
“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.
[13] There is some fiction in what follows,—necessarily introduced
to enable me to give truthfully what I recollect of the actual
conversation. I know more than one stage-driver who has had a seat
in a State Legislature, and filled it with honour to himself and
satisfaction to his constituents. In its important points, the
narrative I have given is true.
[Sidenote: _AN AMERICAN’S HISTORY._]
“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.—
It often has been told
That the British sailors bold
Could flog the tars of France
So handy oh!
They never met their match,
’Till the Yankees did them catch;
Oh the Yankee tars for fighting
Are the dandy oh!
[Sidenote: _NATIONAL VANITIES._]
“‘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.”
[Sidenote: _NATURAL LAWS._]
“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....”
[Sidenote: _NIMROD._]
“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.”
[Sidenote: _THE NEW LAW._]
“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.
[Sidenote: _MATCH FOR A FRENCHMAN._]
“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!”
[Sidenote: _ALL RIGHT._]
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.”