“Stinking, noisy stye,” he elsewhere calls the “Bull and Mouth,” but we must recollect that Sharpe was very affected, a bundle of fine feelings, and a _poseur_: one, in short, born a hundred years before his time, and by no means one of those robust Englishmen to whom noise and stable-smells were but the ordinary and commonplace incidents of coach-journeys and coaching hostelries.
Nothing, you clearly perceive, could have roused Sharpe to enthusiasm. But there were some wildly enthusiastic people on the road then, and they had often cause, in the stirring news they brought with them, to feel exultation of spirits. For with the mail came news of the Battles of the Nile, of Trafalgar, of Waterloo; and many a wayside park was despoiled of laurel branches to deck out the coach in the emblems of victory. Many a time did the mail enter Glasgow in that fashion: decorated with the bays, a red flag flying from the roof, the guard in his best scarlet coat and gold-laced hat, sounding his bugle as the horses galloped at a thundering pace along the Gallowgate. Arrived at the foot of Nelson Street, at about seven o’clock in the morning, his duty was, on these historic occasions, to thrice discharge his blunderbuss in the air. Every one then rushed to the “Tontine” coffee-room to learn the news and get the papers: some one with a stentorian voice being generally elected to read the despatches aloud, for the common benefit.
A thrilling story of those old days, when we were generally at war with France, is that of one Archibald Campbell, a Glasgow merchant who had omitted to insure one of his ships, and, in the last few weeks before she fell due, repented of his omission. Alarmed, he sought to effect insurance with a Glasgow office, but found the premium so high that he resolved to insure ship and cargo in London. Accordingly, he wrote to his London broker, instructing him to insure on the best terms possible. The letter was posted and left by the up mail-coach at 2 p.m. At seven o’clock that night he received an express from Greenock, announcing the safe arrival of his ship, and instantly despatched his head clerk in pursuit of the coach, with instructions to overtake it if possible, or, if he could not do so, to proceed to London and deliver a note to the broker, countermanding the insurance.