When the horses were hitched to it, and Starling Tucker from the high seat with whip and reins directed its swift progress, with rattles and rumbles like a real circus wagon, it was thrilling indeed.

This summer marked the first admission of Wilbur to an intimacy with the privileged driver which entitled him to mount dizzily to the high seat and rattle off to trains.

He had patiently courted Starling Tucker in the office of the Mansion House livery stable, sitting by him in silent admiration while he discoursed learnedly of men and horses, helping to hitch up the dappled grays to the bus, fetching his whip, holding his gloves, until it became a matter of course that he should mount to the high seat with him.
This seemed really to be the best of all loose trades.

On that high seat, one hand grasping an iron railing at the side, sitting by grim-faced Starling Tucker in his battered hat, who drove carelessly with one hand and tugged at his long red moustache with the other, it was pleasantly appalling to reflect that he might be at any moment dashed to pieces on the road below; to remember that Starling himself, the daily associate of horses and a man of high adventure, had once fallen from this very seat and broken bones--the most natural kind of accident, Starling averred, though gossip had blamed it on Pegleg McCarron's whisky.

Not only was it delectable to ride in the high place, to watch trains come and go, to carry your load of travellers back to the Mansion House, but there were interludes of relaxation when you could sit about in the office of the stables and listen to agreeable talk from the choice spirits of abundant leisure, with whom work seemed to be a tribal taboo, daily assembled there.