sketches on the road.

the sudden death.

there are several objections to one-horse vehicles. with two wheels, they are dangerous; with four, generally cruel inventions, tasking one animal with the labour of two. and, in either case, should your horse think proper to die on the road you have no survivor to drag your carriage through the rest of the stage; or to be sent off galloping with the coachman on his back for a coadjutor.

that was precisely miss norman’s dilemma.

if a horse could be supposed to harbour so deadly a spite against his proprietor, i should believe that the one in question chose to vent his animosity by giving up the ghost just at the spot where it would cause most annoyance and inconvenience. for fourteen months past he had drawn the lady in daily

[pg 238]

airings to a point just short of the binn gate;—because that fifty yards further would have cost sixpence; a sum which miss norman could, or believed she could, but ill spare out of a limited income. at this very place, exactly opposite the tall elm which usually gave the signal for turning homeward, did plantagenet prefer to drop down stone dead: as if determined that his mistress should have to walk every inch of it, to her own house.

but miss norman never walked.

“take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves.”

pedestrianism was, in her opinion, a very vulgar exercise, unavoidable with the poor, and to some people, as postmen, bankers’ clerks, hawkers, and the like, a professional mode of progression, but a bodily exertion very derogatory to persons of birth and breeding. so far was this carried, that she was once heard to declare, speaking of certain rather humble obsequies,

[pg 239]

“she would rather live for ever than have a walking funeral!” on another occasion, when the great performance of captain barclay, in walking a thousand miles in a thousand hours, was submitted to her opinion, she said “it was a step she did not approve.”