It may be questioned, too, whether the
foreign companies do not lose as much in
one way as they gain in another; for their
oppressive charges must act as a heavy
duty, and discourage travellers who would
otherwise travel. The English principle,
on the whole, seenis the most equitable,
which allows a certain laxity, and only
interferes when there is an excessive and
unreasonable quantity of baggage.

Ladies, indeed, are terrible offenders in
this way, as hundreds of husbands,
brothers, and fathers, can testify. The leading
principle they lay down is to take all
their worldly effects with them; every
abatement which they make to the force of
necessity is so much gracious and generous
concession. Abroad, say at some pleasant
Rhine station, the truck piled with the
luggage of the travelling family, watched
over by "the man," is a sight to see. The
monstrous and heavy chests, some five or
six; papa's and George's modest portmanteaus;
the dozen small square boxes, which
"do not count," and contain, Heaven knows
what! the dressing-cases, the parcels, the
half-dozen dressing-bags, each holding as
much as, and far heavier than, a carpetbag;
the three or four bundles of cloaks,
shawls, great coats, oil-skin waterproofs,
with, finally, the lictors' fasces of sticks,
umbrellas, parasols, alpenstocks, firmly bound
together, this mass of effects is bewildering,
not to say disheartening, and must embitter
the pleasures of travelling. The mere
getting such things to an hotel, the distribution
through rooms, the unpacking and packing,
the nervous duty of keeping them all
together, and losing nothing, must make
the most delightful of pleasures a most
disagreeable task. And, it may be said,
there is a great art in packing, or in
the distribution of things. For the true
secret of happiness, in baggage, is to put
immediate necessaries apart in a small
and handy receptacle; so that the great case
may be dealt with as a reserve, and left in
sulky majesty at the railway depôt, while
the light and handy case goes off gaily to
the hotel. The inconvenience of dragging
these great chests to hotels for a night, or
half a day, is not to be conceived. They
become, at last, as odious as the monster
was to Frankenstein. But the skilled
traveller knows all these moves.

For the gentleman traveller there is
nothing in the wide world so handy or
convenient as the old valise, of an expanding
sort, and chosen with great nicety as
to its size; not too large, or it becomes a
portmanteau in all but name; not too small,
or it becomes a sort of hand-bag. In the
happy mean lies the art. If your choice
be good, it is a vast blessing. It never
separates from you, it goes in the same
carriage with you everywhere. It should
have a spring lock, so as to open quickly,
and shut smartly. Custom House officers
give you the preference; while the other
victims are waiting for their great chests
to be set in order, you leave the station
triumphantly, a porter carrying the modest
equipage, and you are the better for the
little walk. But here a voice is heard
pleading for what has these advantages to
an infinitely greater degree, the knapsack.
Its owner too, is not delayed, and hoists it
on his shoulder. But there is a sacrifice of
respect in it, there is something shabby and
even mean; every knapsack bearer, unless
the most case-hardened, has a qualm as he
walks, or skulks up, with his poor kit to
the good hotel in the large town. They
are shy of him and of his fellows, and of
that queer uniform he wears, that plaited
thing with a belt, which he is so proud of.
Where there is room, they give it to him
grudgingly; when there is competition for
room, he and his wallet have no chance.
Not so with the owner of the genteel black
valise, which the owner does not carry on
his back.

After all, the American system might
be worth a trial here, modified, of course;
for in that country they have great
lengths of railway, rather than the
confused network of lines that is among us.
It is always pleasant when, by some lucky
chance, you arrive at an hotel, to find your
trunks awaiting you with an air of
welcome. How much more agreeable if this
were reduced to a system. It is surprising
that some authorised agent, for whom a
railway company would be responsible,
should not attend as an experiment, collect
the numbers of trunks and cases from such
as are willing to try the experiment, and
leave all at the various houses. The
sixpences or shillings now given to porters
might be better spent in remunerating such
a useful friend, and the present state of
scramble would be abolished. It is
wonderful how, with the existing inviting
opportunities, a regular organised system of
plunder has not been set on foot. A
timorous passenger, even though he saw
some one carrying off what seemed to be
his trunk, might hesitate to claim it,
through fear of mistake—trunks and
portmanteaus being so like each other.