Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 10).djvu/121

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
STAGECOACHES AND FREIGHTERS
121

necessary to render one capable of listening to others. The traveler often sat at table with statesmen whom the nation honored, as well as with stagecoach-drivers whom a nation knew for their skill and prowess with six galloping horses. Henry Clays and "Red" Buntings dined together, and each made the other wiser, if not better. The greater the gulf grows between the rich and poor, the more ignorant do both become, particularly the rich. There was undoubtedly a monotony in stagecoach journeying, but the continual views of the landscape, the ever-fresh air, the constantly passing throngs of various description, made such traveling an experience unknown to us "arrivers" of today. How fast it has been forgotten that travel means seeing people rather than things. The age of sight-seeing has superseded that of traveling. How few of us can say with the New Hampshire sage: "We have traveled a great deal 'in Concord.'" Splendidly are the old coaching days described by Thackeray, who caught their spirit:

"The Island rang, as yet, with the tooting horns and rattling teams of mail-coaches;