I Must Confess That The Feeling Of Dirt, On The Following
Morning, Is Rather Oppressive.
From Windsor, on the Canada side, we passed over to Detroit, in the
State of Michigan, by a steam ferry.
But ferries in England and
ferries in America are very different. Here, on this Detroit
ferry, some hundred of passengers, who were going forward from the
other side without delay, at once sat down to breakfast. I may as
well explain the way in which disposition is made of one's luggage
as one takes these long journeys. The traveler, when he starts,
has his baggage checked. He abandons his trunk - generally a box,
studded with nails, as long as a coffin and as high as a linen
chest - and, in return for this, he receives an iron ticket with a
number on it. As he approaches the end of his first installment of
travel and while the engine is still working its hardest, a man
comes up to him, bearing with him, suspended on a circular bar, an
infinite variety of other checks. The traveler confides to this
man his wishes, and, if he be going farther without delay,
surrenders his check and receives a counter-check in return. Then,
while the train is still in motion, the new destiny of the trunk is
imparted to it. But another man, with another set of checks, also
comes the way, walking leisurely through the train as he performs
his work. This is the minister of the hotel-omnibus institution.
His business is with those who do not travel beyond the next
terminus. To him, if such be your intention, you make your
confidence, giving up your tallies, and taking other tallies by way
of receipt; and your luggage is afterward found by you in the hall
of your hotel. There is undoubtedly very much of comfort in this;
and the mind of the traveler is lost in amazement as he thinks of
the futile efforts with which he would struggle to regain his
luggage were there no such arrangement. Enormous piles of boxes
are disclosed on the platform at all the larger stations, the
numbers of which are roared forth with quick voice by some two or
three railway denizens at once. A modest English voyager, with six
or seven small packages, would stand no chance of getting anything
if he were left to his own devices. As it is, I am bound to say
that the thing is well done. I have had my desk with all my money
in it lost for a day, and my black leather bag was on one occasion
sent back over the line. They, however, were recovered; and, on
the whole, I feel grateful to the check system of the American
railways. And then, too, one never hears of extra luggage. Of
weight they are quite regardless. On two or three occasions an
overwrought official has muttered between his teeth that ten
packages were a great many, and that some of those "light fixings"
might have been made up into one.
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