 seats on
top were very breezy and comfortable. Well up out of the dust, their occupants
could enjoy the scenery at their leisure, or critically discuss the merits of
the straining team. Naturally such places were in great demand and the
competition for them was keen, every one seeking as the first end in life to
secure a seat on the coach for himself and to leave it to his child after him.
By the rule of the coach a man could leave his seat to whom he wished, but on
the other hand there were many accidents by which it might at any time be wholly
lost. For all that they were so easy, the seats were very insecure, and at every
sudden jolt of the coach persons were slipping out of them and falling to the
ground, where they were instantly compelled to take hold of the rope and help to
drag the coach on which they had before ridden so pleasantly. It was naturally
regarded as a terrible misfortune to lose one's seat, and the apprehension that
this might happen to them or their friends was a constant cloud upon the
happiness of those who rode.
    But did they think only of themselves? you ask. Was not their very luxury
rendered intolerable to them by comparison with the lot of their brothers and
sisters in the harness, and the knowledge that their own weight added to their
toil? Had they no compassion for fellow beings from whom fortune only
distinguished them? Oh, yes; commiseration was frequently expressed by those who
rode for those who had to pull the coach, especially when the vehicle came to a
bad place in the road, as it was constantly doing, or to a particularly steep
hill. At such times, the desperate straining of the team, their agonized leaping
and plunging under the pitiless lashing of hunger, the many who fainted at the
rope and were trampled in the mire, made a very distressing spectacle, which
often called forth highly creditable displays of feeling on the top of the
coach. At such times the passengers would call down encouragingly to the toilers
of the rope, exhorting them to patience, and holding out hopes of possible
compensation in another world for the hardness of their lot, while others
contributed to buy salves and liniments for the crippled and injured. It was
agreed that it was a great pity that the coach should be so hard to pull, and
there was a sense of general relief when the specially bad piece of road was
gotten over. This relief was not, indeed, wholly on account of the team, for
there was always some danger at these bad places of a general overturn in
