[A Walk from London to John O’Groat’s by Elihu Burritt]@TWC D-Link book
A Walk from London to John O’Groat’s

CHAPTER VI
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Here is the portly-looking, well-to-do, two-story tavern, standing out with its comfortable, cream-colored face broadside to the street.

It is represented in the old engraving with a coach-and-four drawn up before the door, surrounded by a crowd of spectators and passengers, some descending and ascending on ladders over the forward wheels; some looking with admiration at the scarlet coats of the pursy and consequential driver and guard; some exchanging greetings, others farewell salutations; ostlers in long waistcoats, plush or fustian shorts, and yellow leggings, standing bareheaded with watering-pails at the "'osses' 'eads;" trunks great and small going up and down; village boys in high excitement; village grandfathers looking very animated; the landlord, burly, bland, and happy, with a face as rotund and genial as the full moon shining upon the scene; and those round, rosy, sunny, laughing faces peering out of the windows with delightful wonderment and exhilaration, winked at by the driver, and saluted with a graceful motion of his whip-handle in recognition of the barmaid, chambermaid, and all the other maids of the house.

The coach, with all its picturesque appointments, its four-in-hand, the stirring heraldry of its horn coming down the road, its rattling wheels, the life and stir aroused and moved in its wake,--all this has gone from the presence of a higher civilisation.

It will never re-appear in future pictures of actual life in England.

It is all gone where the hedges and hedge-row trees will probably go in their turn.


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