It was delightful to hear the gigantic plans of pleasure of the
little rogues, and the impracticable feats they were to perform
during their six weeks' emancipation from the abhorred thral-
dom of book, birch, and pedagogue. They were full of the
anticipations of the meeting with the family and household,
down to the very cat and dog; and of the joy they were to give
their sisters, by the presents with which their pockets were
crammed; but the meeting to which they seemed to look for-
ward with the greatest impatience was with Bantam, which I
found to be a pony, and according to their talk, possessed of
more virtues than any steed since the days of Bucephalus.
How he could trot! how he could run! and then such leaps as
he would take -- there was not a hedge in the whole country
that he could not clear.

They were under the particular guardianship of the coach-
man, to whom, whenever an opportunity presented, they ad-
dressed a host of questions, and pronounced him one of the
best fellows in the whole world. Indeed, I could not but
notice the more than ordinary air of bustle and importance of
the coachman, who wore his hat a little on one side, and had
a large bunch of Christmas greens stuck in the button-hole
of his coat. He is always a personage full of mighty care and
business; but he is particularly so during this season, having
so many commissions to execute in consequence of the great
interchange of presents. And here, perhaps, it may not be
unacceptable to my untravelled readers, to have a sketch that
may serve as a general representation of this very numerous
and important class of functionaries, who have a dress, a man-
ner, a language, an air, peculiar to themselves, and prevalent
throughout the fraternity; so that, wherever an English stage-
coachman may be seen, he cannot be mistaken for one of any
other craft or mystery.

He has commonly a broad full face, curiously mottled with
red, as if the blood had been forced by hard feeding into every
vessel of the skin; he is swelled into jolly dimensions by fre-
quent potations of malt liquors, and his bulk is still farther

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