This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
18
AN EMIGRANT'S HOME LETTERS

second-class carriage with such bitterness that I began to think we should surely be the subject of a tale in the 'Penny Storyteller,' entitled 'The Weather Slain.' We saw very little of any interest on the way, except the tunnels, one of which is nearly two miles long. Had it been a hundred, we should not have been so murdered by the weather, but as it was, we were through it in five minutes. We saw nothing of Coventry but about a hundred poor men's houses, two church steeples, and two or three high chimneys, the line of road being cut through the rising ground on the right of the city several yards deep. The day cleared up as it died away, and the ghost of a devil that dragged us along tore out from Primrose Hill with the bright crescent moon above us in a calm and beautiful sky. In half an hour afterwards we were in London.

I enquired of one of the company's porters where I could get lodged for the night, and he directed me to a coffee-house just outside the gates, and offered to carry our baggage there; but when we got to the gates the sentinel would not let him go out. That the fellow knew well enough, so I was obliged to have another to carry it the other six yards. A double expense to begin with. On Friday I found out Houldin's,