And if a coachman sparks a flicker of a character for you, you might be interested in this little tidbit called the Road Game.
HE ROAD GAME.
The chances are a hundred to one that in these days the reader never saw or heard of the 'road game,' which was sometimes also called 'road piquette;' and when I have informed him what it was, he may probably consider it a slow proceeding, and hardly worth the name of an amusement to pass the time. In these days of rapid movement, when one goes so fast that one can hardly count the telegraph posts or distinguish how many wires there are, the 'road game' cannot well be played, and with newspapers and books to read in the train it would be a slow proceeding. But on a coach, doing nine or even ten miles an hour, instead of forty, time sometimes hung rather heavily on hand, and we were glad to have a game of any sort to beguile the hours that were sometimes rather tedious. Though there were generally plenty of incidents along the road, still if incidents did not present themselves just when wanted, the 'road game' was sometimes played; and I have seen as much amusement and jollity over it, and I may say excitement, as if there had been a pack of cards and whist inside a railway carriage. The coachman, for instance, and the person sitting beside him would have a game, tossing up for taking choice of which side of the road they would have. A donkey counted seven, a pig one, a black sheep one, a cat five, a cat in a window ten, a dog one, a magpie one, a grey horse five; and there was one thing by which game might be got at once, but it was connected with what I cannot venture to describe, and it was a very rare occurrence. Once in my life, and only once, I saw this feat performed, and it elicited a shout of ' Game, by Jove!'
Source: Down the Road', Or, Reminiscences of a Gentleman Coachman ©1887
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