harem—she was preceded by running-
footmen of the wildest and most
picturesque kind. They were swarthy, lithe,
half-naked fellows, brandishing huge
torches in the darkness of evening, and
screaming out to scare away any and all
who might otherwise impede the progress
of the imperial and viceregal personages.
Our puny attempts at a cavalcade must
have been beaten all to nothing by this.

And yet the time was when running-footmen
formed part of the establishment
of our titled folks and county families.
They used to run in front of the travelling-carriage,
when out on journeys of any
considerable distance; partly to be at hand
when the wheels stuck in the mud of the
wretched roads, but chiefly to make a
show in the eyes of the world. A speed
of four or five miles an hour the men could
maintain for several hours together; but
when improved roads permitted a speed of
six or seven miles to be kept up, the running-footmen
gradually ceased to be
employed. Sir Walter Scott mentions his
having seen the state-coach of the Earl of
Hopetoun preceded in this way. The old
Duke of Queensberry was one of the last
who kept up this practice; and a story is
told of a running-footman who displayed
his agility by running off with his grace's
livery while "showing his paces."  These
domestics were usually attired in a sort of
light jockey dress; sometimes they carried
a pole or staff six feet long or so, the top of
which was a hollow ball, containing a hard-boiled
egg, or a little wine, for an occasional
snack on the journey. Occasionally these
men did their forty or fifty miles in a day.
Their more celebrated achievements were
as special messengers, in days when railway
trains and electric telegraphs were
undreamed of. On one occasion such a
messenger ran from Home Castle to
Edinburgh and back (seventy miles) during an
evening and night, to fetch a doctor; and
there was another who ran a hundred and
fifty miles in forty-two hours, to fetch some
medicine. These runners, it must further
be understood, had to travel over such
roads and hill paths as would stagger a
modern Mayfair footman. By the way,
this word "footman" was derived from the
nimble-footed precursors of the present
James Plush and friends. In Cole's Art of
Simpling, published in the time of Charles
the Second, we are told that, "If a footman
take mugwort and put it into his shoes in
the morning he may goe forty miles before
noone, and not be weary." Valuable
mugwort this: do our pedestrians (let alone
running-footmen) know anything about it?

Of course many crack runners have
made a noise and obtained fame, alike
independent of the footman world and the
sporting world. There was the Shoreditch
tradesman, neither young nor slim,
who in 1750 ran from the church in that
street to Edmonton, eight miles, in fifty
minutes. There was the shepherd who,
in 1764, ran on Moulsey Hurst fifteen
miles in eighty-eight minutes—at the rate
of full ten miles an hour. Of course these
achievements have been beaten by the
professional racers, concerning whom it is not
the purpose of the present article to speak.
There was once a race between two men,
one of whom was unfairly interrupted by
an emissary of the other: he knocked the
rascal down, fell over him, picked himself
up again, and won the race. There was a
running match between a lady and a
gentleman round the Steyne at Brighton in
1825: the gentleman ran well, but the lady
ran better, and she won.

One Captain Otto made a curious match at
Brighton in 1803. He undertook to carry on
his back or shoulders a stalwart grenadier of
eighteen stone, and to run against a pony
carrying a feather; but the grenadier pitched
over the head of his bearer, and nearly
brought both to ruin. The captain was to
have run fifty yards against the pony's
hundred and fifty.  He then challenged a noble
lord to a contest, in which Otto should carry
his grenadier fifty yards, while the lord
carried a feather a hundred; but the captain
was vanquished. Did "feather" mean
feather-weight, or light-weight rider, in the
sporting phraseology of sixty or seventy
years ago? Then there was the worthy who,
in 1751, trundled a coach-wheel from the
Bishop's Head, in the Old Bailey, to the
eleventh milestone at Barnet, and back
again, in three hours fifty-one minutes. He
won fifty pounds by achieving this curious
feat in less than four hours.

Nor is there any deficiency of walking
achievements, irrespective of those by
professional pedestrians, and sometimes marked
by singular conditions. There was the
attorney's clerk who, in 1773, took a walk
from London to York and back, and
accomplished the whole four hundred miles
between Monday morning and Saturday
evening in one week. There was the
Gloucestershire militiaman, about the same
period, who walked from London to Bristol in
a little less than twenty hours—so, at least,
said the newspapers of the period. It would