Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 212, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1914 — RIGID HONESTY IN ENGLAND [ARTICLE]

RIGID HONESTY IN ENGLAND

According to American Traveler, All People In That. Country Are Considered Trustworthy. ■ London specifically and England generally are undoubtedly the most rigidly, thoughtlessly, automatically honest city and country I have ever discovered. The first taxicab driver .4 hired told me honestly the correct tip. So did the first hotel porter. The other day I wanted an opera glass with which to pay more particular attention to some healthy young women the Londoners firmly believo are stage beauties.' So I dropped a sixpence in the slotz Imagine my surprise when the machine opened and I found a pair of $lO glasses—without a chain—offered to my hgnd. In New YOrk they not only chain the opera glasses, but they do everything but put bells and a whistle on them. When you go traveling in England you first buy a ticket Then you get injo the/carriage of the class for which you have purchased that ticket, and ride until you reach your destination. Then, if that happens to be a small station you get out of the carriage and hunt about until you find the man who ought to take it. In the meantime it is assumed that you did not go into a first-class carriage, having bought a third-class ticket. No one comes to bother you about it. It is merely accepted by all concerned that you will take the compartment to .which your ticket entitles

you. Two weeks ago the London papers made, a sensation —so far as they are journalistically, able to make a sensation out of anything—out of the fact that some one had persistently traveled on a time-expired commuter’s ticket. ' No action was taken until ha had been caught at it three times, because the assumption was that he had made a mistake and would be frightfully put out when he discovered that he had picked up last month's ticket when he left home. y When he was finally summonsed he said that he didn’t do it —that it was at case of mistaken identity—and every one seemed happy to accept that explanation. In the restaurants you help yourself to rolls and pastry and pay on your own tally. Motorbus conductors always give you the right change. Country gentlemen imbed broken glass in the mortar on top of the walls that surround their estates. Then they leave the garden doors unlocked, secure that no one will attempt to enter. The glass is intended merely to* emphasize their desire for privacy. During warm weather .housekeepers in London leave their front doors open, and depend upon a curtain to keep prying eyes out They do not seem to fear that prying persons might get through.—Exchange.