For thirteen years, winter and summer, this coachman had driven this monotonous, uninteresting route, with always the same sandy hills, scrubby firs, occasional cabins, in sight.  What a time to nurse his thought and feed on his heart!  How deliberately he can turn things over in his brain!  What a system of philosophy he might evolve out of his consciousness!  One would think so.  But, in fact, the stagebox is no place for thinking.  To handle twelve horses every day, to keep each to its proper work, stimulating the lazy and restraining the free, humoring each disposition, so that the greatest amount of work shall be obtained with the least friction, making each trip on time, and so as to leave each horse in as good condition at the close as at the start, taking advantage of the road, refreshing the team by an occasional spurt of speed,—­all these things require constant attention; and if the driver was composing an epic, the coach might go into the ditch, or, if no accident happened, the horses would be worn out in a month, except for the driver’s care.

I conclude that the most delicate and important occupation in life is stage-driving.  It would be easier to “run” the Treasury Department of the United States than a four-in-hand.  I have a sense of the unimportance of everything else in comparison with this business in hand.  And I think the driver shares that feeling.  He is the autocrat of the situation.  He is lord of all the humble passengers, and they feel their inferiority.  They may have knowledge and skill in some things, but they are of no use here.  At all the stables the driver is king; all the people on the route are deferential to him; they are happy if he will crack a joke with them, and take it as a favor if he gives them better than they send.  And it is his joke that always raises the laugh, regardless of its quality.

We carry the royal mail, and as we go along drop little sealed canvas bags at way offices.  The bags would not hold more than three pints of meal, and I can see that there is nothing in them.  Yet somebody along here must be expecting a letter, or they would not keep up the mail facilities.  At French River we change horses.  There is a mill here, and there are half a dozen houses, and a cranky bridge, which the driver thinks will not tumble down this trip.  The settlement may have seen better days, and will probably see worse.

I preferred to cross the long, shaky wooden bridge on foot, leaving the inside passengers to take the risk, and get the worth of their money; and while the horses were being put to, I walked on over the hill.  And here I encountered a veritable foot-pad, with a club in his hand and a bundle on his shoulder, coming down the dusty road, with the wild-eyed aspect of one who travels into a far country in search of adventure.  He seemed to be of a cheerful and sociable turn, and desired that I should linger and converse with him.  But he was more meagerly supplied with