The stagecoach was little better than a huge covered box mounted on springs.  It had neither glass windows, nor door, nor steps, nor closed sides.  The roof was upheld by ten posts which rose from the body of the vehicle, and the body was commonly breast high.  From the top were hung curtains of leather, to be rolled up when the day was fine, and let down and buttoned when it was rainy and cold.  Within were four seats.  Without was the baggage.  Fourteen pounds of luggage were allowed to be carried free by each passenger.  But if your portmanteau or your brass-nail-studded hair trunk weighed more, you would have paid for it at the rate per mile that you paid for yourself.  Under no circumstances, however, would you be permitted to take on the journey more than 150 pounds.  When the baggage had all been weighed and strapped on the coach, when the horses had been attached, and the waybill, containing the names of the passengers, made out, the passengers would clamber to their seats through the front of the stage and sit down with their faces toward the driver’s seat.

One pair of horses usually dragged the coach eighteen miles, when a fresh pair would be attached, and if all went well, you would be put down about ten at night at some wayside inn or tavern after a journey of forty miles.  Cramped and weary, you would eat a frugal supper and hurry off to bed with a notice from the landlord to be ready to start at three the next morning.  Then, no matter if it rained or snowed, you would be forced to make ready by the dim light of a horn lantern, unknown now, for another ride of eighteen hours.

If no mishaps occurred, if the coach was not upset by the ruts, if storm or flood did not delay you at Springfield, where the road met the Connecticut, or at Stratford, where it met the Housatonic, each of which had to be crossed on clumsy flatboats, the stage would roll into New York at the end of the sixth day.

%197.  Two Days from New York to Philadelphia.%—­And here a serious delay was almost certain to occur, for even in the best of weather it was no easy matter to cross the Hudson to New Jersey.  When the wind was high and the water rough, or the river full of ice, the boldest did not dare to risk a crossing.  Once over the river, you would again go on by coach, and at the end of two more days would reach Philadelphia.  In our time one can travel in eight hours the entire distance between Boston and Philadelphia, a distance which Washington could not have traversed in less than eight days.

[Illustration:  Stagecoach and inn[1]]

[Footnote 1:  From a print of 1798.]

%198.  The Roads and the Inns.%—­The newspapers and the travelers of those days complained bitterly of the roads and the inns.  On the best roads the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and the passengers were often forced to get out and help the driver pull the wheels out of the mud.  Breakdowns and upsets were of everyday occurrence.  Yet bad as the roads were, the travel was so considerable that very often the inns and taverns even in the large cities could not lodge all who applied unless they slept five or six in a room.