Judge — 1888 — page 26: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

24 PICTURES OF TRAVEL. ROBERT J. BURDETTE. Bane of all banes in this transitory world is baggage. I have had griefs to stir a mutiny in the blood of age, all on ac- count of a valise weighing not more than forty pounds. 1 have had sorrow and vexation of spirit, days of anxiety and nights of waking, because of trunks not lost, but gone before hind. says Mr. Newtraveler, “there is no necessity for hav- ing any trouble with baggage in this country. You can check ies trunks from your hotel in lew York and find them at your hotel in San Francisco when there you arrive.” So you can. So you can. If they are there. 1 will admit at the outset that I am somewhat absent-minded, and hence unfit to be trusted with the care of my own bag- gage. Once I went away from Oberlin, Ohio, leaving all my worldly belongings on the station platform, and for three days thereafter I wandered up and down the land without a check on my baggage or con- duct ; but the agent at Oberlin, assisted by the expresscompany, overtook me with my lecture, night robe and dress suit, and all was well. In ten years of wandering I never lost a pound of baggage. But oh, the times the baggage has lost me. We always meet again ; but even with the hope, or even the certainty of meeting by and by, parting with one’s baggage is a pang, and the hours of waiting are long and heavy. Sometimes it gets ‘carried by.” This feat is deftly accomplished by the baggageman on the train. It con in carrying a trunk checked for Kankakee, on to Chicago, then taking it back to Cin- cinnation the return train, and bringing it back to Kankakee two days after you have gone to Den- ver. A good baggage- man who understands his business can keep a trunk going up and down the road for ballast, until the train gets wrecked or the owner of the trunk dies and his heirs pay the rail- roadcompany something for extra baggage. Then sometimes the checks get crossed. One piercing winter afternoon I stepped from the train out in Minnesota, and handing the ’bus man my check—good for four fig- ures—I went to the hotel. About twenty minutes be- fore lecture time a tin trunk came into my room bearing the marks of 4,000 miles of travel, and ex- haling the balmy breath of the steerage. It was locked with a hasp and a wooden peg. It con- tained some strange look - ing, roomy articles of raiment which the land- lord assured me were woolen shirts, a pair of leather breeches, double yp happy.” Mrs. CLamprt—4 But you don't Mrs, Eptso: i perfect, and he can't understand why the thick atthe dome, adozen_ that his groom has forgotten to coil the crupper strap escapes him. know all, Katharine. skeleton in the closet?” s two hundred and fifty pounds.” ly have Mrs. CLartt—*Oh, no; our cook wi DARWINIAN. Chumley is sure that his horse is thoroughbred, his equipments first-class and his sadd'e set NATURAL GAS FROM JUDGE. THE CAUSE OF THE TROUBLE. Mrs. Episox—" You've such a pretty house, a charming husband, and lovely children, you certainly ought to be vests. None of these things had I any desire to wear, especially as the hardy Viking to whom they belonged had been cast in a mould big enough to turn me out in sets of half a dozen. It was two days before I got my valise. I would not have got it so soon— because I never make much of a row about these things—but the Scandinavian to whom belonged the tin trunk had made Wal- halla how! when the baggageman delivered to him my poor valise with its tawdry trinkets. “By the hjammer jf thor,” he roared. “ Jwfhat use jhavj I, a grownj jman, fjor these baby clothes?” And he cast it away, and would have none of it. There is one minis- tering presencethat hov- ers over the wanderer likea guardian spiritand never abandons him so long as there remains even the faint hope of a sale. ’Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, there is noth- ing so constant as the train boy. It were folly to talk of abolishing him, for he is almost indis- pensable. But fre- quently he needs regu- lating. I admired a la- dy whom I saw the other day on a train running outof Indianapolis, The boy threw into her lap, as he did into the laps of all the patient pas- sengers, a bound book, a box of figs, and a roll- ing-pin full of candy. She calmly swept the assortment off upon the floor. On his return trip the indignant boy re- monstrated. “ Lady,”he said, ‘I didn’t bring these things into the car to have ’em thrown on the floor.” “And I,” rk habitues are so intensely amused. The fact the Pst 4 said the lady, sweetly, comicbooks.com