Mounted on the engine platform
In a few weeks they will be unceremoniously pushed from their boxes by an inanimate thing of vapour and flywheels by a meddling fellow in a clean white jacket and a face not ditto to match, who, mounted on the engine platform, has for some weeks been flourishing a red hot poker over their heads, in triumph at their discomfiture and downfall; and the turnpike road, shorn of its glories, is left desolate and lone. No more shall the merry rattle of the wheels, as the frisky four-in-hand careers in the morning mist, summon the village beauty from her toilet to the window-pane to catch a passing nod of gallantry; no more shall they loiter by the way to trifle with the pretty coquette in the bar, or light up another kind of flame for the fragrant Havannah fished from amongst the miscellaneous deposits in the depths of the box-coat pockets. True, the race were always a little fond of raillery, and therefore they die by what they love we speak of course of professional demise but no doubt they hold it hard, after having so often pulled up to be thus pulled down from their high eminences, and compelled to sink into mere landlords of hotels, farmers, or private gentlemen. Yet so it is. They are regularly booked. Their places are taken by one who shows no disposition to make room for them; even their coaches are already beginning to crumble into things that have been; and their bodies (we mean their coach bodies) are being seized upon by rural loving folks, for the vulgar purpose of summer-houses. But a few days and they will all vanish
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