[Illustration: Advertisement of Twichell's Stage Line.]
A friend who remembers riding with Twichell eulogizes him in the warmest terms for his accommodating spirit and happy faculty of making all his passengers as comfortable as possible. He had an inexhaustible fund of racy anecdotes which he would tell so well that it was a perfect treat to ride upon the box with him. He was a general favorite, especially with the country folks, and the boys and girls on the road, and with these he always had a joke to crack whenever it came his way to do so, to the infinite amusement of the travellers whom he had in charge. He carried many small and valuable parcels, and executed commissions for the people like an expressman. After a period of self-denial in early life, throughout which he had saved his liberal earnings carefully, he was enabled to purchase from Mr. Stockwell the stage and two horses which he drove between Athol and Barre. About 1837 he started with Mr. Burt and Mr. Billings a stage line from Brattleboro to Worcester.
In 1843 he was engaged in driving a stage of his own between Barre and Worcester. Not long afterwards he was sole owner of a line from Greenfield, Massachusetts, to Brattleboro, Vermont. The Postmaster-general about this time advertised for mail contracts, and Ginery Twichell went to Washington. It was supposed by the owners of the other lines, who knew he had gone thither, that he would not undertake to execute more than one contract, but his own private views, it appears, were somewhat broader, for he contracted with the Government to carry the mails upon a number of routes, greatly to the astonishment of others in the business; and what was better still, he accomplished what he had undertaken very satisfactorily to the Postmaster-general, and came to be regarded as a sort of Napoleon among mail contractors. He became the owner of a large number of fine stages and horses. He ran a line from Worcester to Northfield, sixty miles, three times a week; from Worcester to Winchester, fifty-five miles, daily; from Worcester to Keene, fifty-four miles, three times a week; to Templeton twenty-five miles, daily; from Templeton to Greenfield, forty-eight miles, daily; from Barre to Worcester, forty-four miles, daily. In all this was two hundred and eighty-six miles of stage-route, and it took a hundred and fifty-six horses to do the work.