Jasper County Democrat, Volume 1, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 March 1899 — ON THE CONTINENT. [ARTICLE]

ON THE CONTINENT.

Only Those Who Know the Ropes Can Travel with Comfort. Rich foreigners traveling on the continent subject themselves to many annoyances which strike the American first-class traveler as entirely unnecessary, but they also take solid comfort in their own way and according to princely lights. Barring luxuries to which the great railway corporations here have accustomed us, the modes of getting about in European countries are not to be despised. On the other side voyageure still voyage with all their luggage in their laps or on the seats of the compartment, and because of this time-hon-ored custom a regular class of thieves ply from one end of the steel thoroughfares to the other, ever on the alert for the satchel of jewels or the unwary stranger with valuables in a handbag. The reason wealthy persons burden themselves with such things is there is always danger of the larger baggage being robbed in transfer. No one has ever been able to keep a strap on his or her trunks, porters on the other side coolly removing them under the very eyes of the owner. Great thefts have been committed in France and Italy on the different railway lines, either at the station where the luggage was put on board the train or by those officials in charge of it before it reached its destination. No tourist who has thus suffered has been able to get redress, and hence the native, aware of the weakness of these railway officials, carries the tempting handbag, which in its time may also disappear. But aside from these and also the bother of paying for baggage by weight, the wealthy man who lias lived abroad long enough to know the ropes certainly travels en prince. His rugs and his cushions are a study. His elaborate dressing bag, his books, his facilities for taking something nourishing en route, are marvels of entertaining completeness to the American who bounds from New .York to San Francisco and is cared for by a road that ministers to every want.—Boston Herald.