Charles Dickens

“ Unlike the guard of the new Manchester mail, YOUR guard is at home in his new place, and has roystering highwaymen and gallant desperadoes ever within call. And if I might compare you, my child, to an engine; (not a Tory engine, nor a Whig engine, but a brisk and rapid locomotive;) ”

“ As we whirled away, I was led insensibly into an anticipation of those days to come, when mail-coach guards shall no longer be judges of horse-flesh--when a mail-coach guard shall never even have seen a horse--when stations shall have superseded stables, and corn shall have given place to coke. 'In those dawning times,' thought I, 'exhibition-rooms shall teem with portraits of Her Majesty's favourite engine, with boilers after Nature by future Landseers. Some Amburgh, yet unborn, shall break wild horses by his magic power ”

“ It is a trite observation, and one which, young as you are, I have no doubt you have often heard repeated, that we have fallen upon strange times, and live in days of constant shiftings and changes. I had a melancholy instance of this only a week or two since. I was returning from Manchester to London by the Mail Train, when I suddenly fell into another train--a mixed train--of reflection, occasioned by the dejected and disconsolate demeanour of the Post-Office Guard. ”