While Marble and I were wrangling on this very point, a little
incident occurred, which led to important consequences in the
end. Hackney-coaches, or any other public conveyance, short of
post-chaises and post-horses, are not admitted into the English
parks. But glass-coaches are; meaning by this term, which is never
used in America, hired carriages that do not go on the stands. We
encountered one of these glass-coaches in a very serious
difficulty. The horses had got frightened by means of a wheelbarrow,
aided probably by some bad management of the driver, and had actually
backed the hind-wheels of the vehicle into the water of the
canal. They would have soon had the whole carriage submerged, and have
followed it themselves, had it not been for the chief-mate and
myself. I thrust the wheelbarrow under one of the forward-wheels, just
in time to prevent the final catastrophe; while Marble grasped the
spoke with his iron gripe, and, together, he and the wheelbarrow made
a resistance that counterbalanced the backward tendency of the
team. There was no footman; and, springing to the door, I aided a
sickly-looking, elderly man--a female who might very well have been
his wife, and another that I took for his daughter--to escape. By my
agency all three were put on the dry land, without even wetting their
feet, though I fared worse myself.
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