Wiktionary
n. (context historical English) A horse-drawn coach that runs routinely between two destinations to transport passengers and mail.
Usage examples of "stage-coach".
Before emerging from it, the rattling of wheels approached behind us, and a stage-coach rumbled out of the mountain, with seats on top and trunks behind, and a smart driver, in a drab greatcoat, touching the wheel horses with the whipstock and reining in the leaders.
I bought a new hat, and a shirt with winkers, packed up me traps, and came to Market Harborough on the stage-coach.
Thus determined, he packed up his necessaries in a portmanteau, attempted to amuse his creditors with promises of speedy payment, and, venturing to come forth in the dark, took a place in the Canterbury stage-coach, after having converted his superfluities into ready money.
This reminds me of an incident of Palestine travel which is pertinent here, so I will transfer it just in the language in which I find it set down in my Holy Land note-book: No doubt everybody has heard of Ben Holliday--a man of prodigious energy, who used to send mails and passengers flying across the continent in his overland stage-coaches like a very whirlwind--two thousand long miles in fifteen days and a half, by the watch!
He was fortunate enough when he got on to the highroad to be overtaken by the stage-coach, which carried him to Brassing.
And once, in the night, they attacked the stage-coach when a District Judge, of Nevada Territory, was the only passenger, and with their first volley of arrows (and a bullet or two) they riddled the stage curtains, wounded a horse or two and mortally wounded the driver.
Lowering his voice and steering the Doctor right aft so that they stood by one of the splendid great stern-lanterns, swaying to the even pitch and roll, he went on, 'It may seem wicked, even blasphemous, to say that my orders might have been written by a parcel of landsmen, accustomed to the regularity of travelling by stage-coach, or by navigation on an inland canal: yet on the other hand some of the lords are mere landborne politicians, and anyhow the orders pass down through the secretary, that ass Barrow, to a number of clerks who may never have been afloat at all - but all that to one side.
Toward evening, the stage-coach came thundering into Hawkeye with a perfectly triumphant ostentation--which was natural and proper, for Hawkey a was a pretty large town for interior Missouri.
All I know is that Laurie has hoaxed her into believing that there is not a place to be had in any of the stage-coaches, and that the Mail doesn't reach Leeds until four o'clock.
Once I resolved to take the stage-coach to West Chester, on purpose only to have the satisfaction of coming back, that he might see me really come in the same coach.