Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 November 1890 — BACCACE SMASHERS. [ARTICLE]

BACCACE SMASHERS.

Kat« Thorn Qlr«i Her Ex perl once with That Class of People. Almost everybody who travels complains of how dreadfully baggage is smashed up. A Dew trunk, they say, which costs twenty dollars, will be done to death in making a trip frbm Washington to Quebec, and homo, bv the way of the great lakes. A friend of onrs, who is a great traveler, and who is generally accompanied by a couple of Saratogas, telb us that she never enjoys the scenerv anywhere, because she is worry ing so about her trunks. In her experience she has had dozens of them broken open, and the contents scattered, and is always expecting such a catastrophe. All travelers indulge in gloomy forebodings of that kind, to some extent. The only really independent traveler is the Boston drummer, and there are about twenty of him ou every train, and he occupies two seats, and carries his luggage— three boxes and two bags —in his hand. Of course, a great deal of blame is attached to the railway officials who handle the luggage. We have heard them called almost anything except decent men. Everybody feels at -liberty to show them lip, and then if thev venture to say anything in return, tliev are reported to the company for insolence and disrespectful conduct. Now a “baggage smasher” is a man with a man’s feelings. He isn’t a Samson, or a California pack-horse, or a Virginia mule. No matter how good his will maybe, be cannot move a meeting house. He cannot take a trunk which weighs two hundred and carry it in his arms as he would his first baby, even if it be filled with rare old china and geological specimens mixed up together. And when, after drawing in a full breath and setting back his cap and bracing himself, lie manages to lift one of these trunks to a level with the truck, lie ca mot let it down easy, but has to let it go, and it goes down with a bang! And unless he be a Hercules how is he going to help it ? Jest consider the number cf trunks and heavy packages a baggage master has to handle in the course of a dav in a large city like New York or Chicago, and think what his muscles must be made of to do it! Think of his backbone !

We look at him sometimes aud we fall to speculating on how he does it! On how he manages to keep on doing it? We should think that when he went home at night, if be ever does go home, he would be too tired to hug his wife and split the kindling w ood. What is the remedy ? We don’t propose any. It would be useless if we did. Nobody would adopt it. A woman would rather have her trunks burst open on every trip thau to go anywhere without the stereotyped quantity of lingerie, the morning and evening and dinner dresses, aud the boots and shoes, and bonnets and parasols, and toilet fixiugs, and new novels deemed necessary for a week’s stav anywhere. The‘fact of it is, the dear creatures must have the things, and they fill np big trunks, and the baggage smashers have got to grin and boar it or quit the business. And if they turn the trunks end over end, and upset the liquid pearl over the morning slippers, and spill tho liquid rouge over the hundred-dol-l.ar silk dress, who is to blame? The trunks have to be got into the baggage van somehow, and we defy any mortal man to get them there without turning them over a good many times. The woman who has independence enough to travel with nothing by way of baggage but a handbag, and we know a few such women, is happy. She is at liberty to enjoy the moving panorama which presents itself from the car window. She doesn’t trouble herself about that trunk! She is not at the mercy of any official in blue uniform, with a gilt band ou his bat.. And in closing, we extend our hearty sympathy to baggage smashers, all over tho country, a-,d when we get into Congress we will ;ise our intineuce to limit the weight of one parcel of baggage to fifty pounds, even if we have to put our bonnets, and petticoats, and things up iu a dozen parcels.— New York Weekly.