What is "stage carriage"

Stage \Stage\ (st[=a]j), n. [OF. estage, F. ['e]tage, (assumed) LL. staticum, from L. stare to stand. See Stand, and cf. Static.]

1. A floor or story of a house. [Obs.]
   --Wyclif.

2. An elevated platform on which an orator may speak, a play be performed, an exhibition be presented, or the like.

3. A floor elevated for the convenience of mechanical work, or the like; a scaffold; a staging.

4. A platform, often floating, serving as a kind of wharf.

5. The floor for scenic performances; hence, the theater; the playhouse; hence, also, the profession of representing dramatic compositions; the drama, as acted or exhibited.

   Knights, squires, and steeds, must enter on the stage.
   --Pope.

   Lo! where the stage, the poor, degraded stage, Holds its warped mirror to a gaping age.
   --C. Sprague.

6. A place where anything is publicly exhibited; the scene of any noted action or career; the spot where any remarkable affair occurs; as, politicians must live their lives on the public stage.

   When we are born, we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools.
   --Shak.

   Music and ethereal mirth Wherewith the stage of air and earth did ring.
   --Miton.

7. The platform of a microscope, upon which an object is placed to be viewed. See Illust. of Microscope.

8. A place of rest on a regularly traveled road; a stage house; a station; a place appointed for a relay of horses.

9. A degree of advancement in a journey; one of several portions into which a road or course is marked off; the distance between two places of rest on a road; as, a stage of ten miles.

   A stage . . . signifies a certain distance on a road.
   --Jeffrey.

   He traveled by gig, with his wife, his favorite horse performing the journey by easy stages.
   --Smiles.

10. A degree of advancement in any pursuit, or of progress toward an end or result.

    Such a polity is suited only to a particular stage in the progress of society.
    --Macaulay.

11. A large vehicle running from station to station for the accommodation of the public; a stagecoach; an omnibus. ``A parcel sent you by the stage.''
    --Cowper.

    I went in the sixpenny stage.
    --Swift.

12. (Biol.) One of several marked phases or periods in the development and growth of many animals and plants; as, the larval stage; pupa stage; z[oe]a stage.

    Stage box, a box close to the stage in a theater.

    Stage carriage, a stagecoach.

    Stage door, the actors' and workmen's entrance to a theater.

    Stage lights, the lights by which the stage in a theater is illuminated.

    Stage micrometer, a graduated device applied to the stage of a microscope for measuring the size of an object.

    Stage wagon, a wagon which runs between two places for conveying passengers or goods.

    Stage whisper, a loud whisper, as by an actor in a theater, supposed, for dramatic effect, to be unheard by one or more of his fellow actors, yet audible to the audience; an aside.

n. stagecoach