As a pupil, though I paid extra fees, I cannot say that I stood high in his esteem.  It showed his dogged honesty, (though, observe, not his discernment,) that he could not see my merits.  Perhaps we ought to excuse his absurdity in this particular by remembering his want of an eye. That made him blind to my merits.  Irritating as this blindness was, (surely it could not be envy?) he always courted my conversation, in which art I certainly had the whip-hand of him.  On this occasion, great joy was at our meeting.  But what was Cyclops doing here?  Had the medical men recommended northern air, or how?  I collected, from such explanations as he volunteered, that he had an interest at stake in a suit-at-law pending at Lancaster; so that probably he had got himself transferred to this station, for the purpose of connecting with his professional pursuits an instant readiness for the calls of his lawsuit.

Meantime, what are we stopping for?  Surely, we’ve been waiting long enough.  Oh, this procrastinating mail, and oh this procrastinating post-office!  Can’t they take a lesson upon that subject from me?  Some people have called me procrastinating.  Now you are witness, reader, that I was in time for them.  But can they lay their hands on their hearts, and say that they were in time for me?  I, during my life, have often had to wait for the post-office; the post-office never waited a minute for me.  What are they about?  The guard tells me that there is a large extra accumulation of foreign mails this night, owing to irregularities caused by war and by the packet service, when as yet nothing is done by steam.  For an extra hour, it seems, the post-office has been engaged in threshing out the pure wheaten correspondence of Glasgow, and winnowing it from the chaff of all baser intermediate towns.  We can hear the flails going at this moment.  But at last all is finished.  Sound your horn, guard.  Manchester, good bye; we’ve lost an hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office; which, however, though I do not mean to part with a serviceable ground of complaint, and one which really is such for the horses, to me secretly is an advantage, since it compels us to recover this last hour amongst the next eight or nine.  Off we are at last, and at eleven miles an hour; and at first I detect no changes in the energy or in the skill of Cyclops.

From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually (though not in law) is the capital of Westmoreland, were at this time seven stages of eleven miles each.  The first five of these, dated from Manchester, terminated in Lancaster, which was therefore fifty-five miles north of Manchester, and the same distance exactly from Liverpool.  The first three terminated in Preston, (called, by way of distinction from other towns of that name, proud Preston,) at which place it was that the separate roads from Liverpool and from Manchester to the north became confluent.