frequently suffer from a tendency of my costume to disruption in moments of stress. At times of great muscular exertion and mental excitement my hat tends to take an inebriate lunge, each several hairpin stands on end, my collar rises rowdyish from its moorings, impeccable glove fingers gape wantonly. All these circumstances attended the closing of my telescope on that occasion. It was immediately after that I decided upon the necessity of a third piece of baggage.

I bought it in Edinburgh, on Princes Street, the wonderful street where you vainly seek to apply yourself to mundane shopping with Edinburgh Castle ever filling your vision, standing over there on its craggy hill, all misty with legend, while a hundred memories of Mary Queen of Scots come whispering at your ear as you soberly endeavor to buy gloves. If my previous impedimenta had been outrageously American, my third handbag was Scotch, every inch of him. He was gentlemanly and distinguished, frank and accommodating. I have never seen anything like him over here,—shiny black sides of oil-cloth, bound by leather strips, plentifully studded with tacks, but otherwise strictly unornamented. But his chief charm was the way he opened, the whole top flapping easily apart at will, and afterwards the two sides closing over all as easily as if his only desire were to please. In capacity he was unlimited; you could pour into him, on and on, and always he closed upon his contents smilingly, without protest.

For a brief space, as I trickled down through England from cathedral to cathedral, my Scotch companion was my chiefest comfort, the mere sight of his black, rising-sunshiny face cheering me as it looked down upon me from the luggage rack of a third-class carriage. More and more I came to impose upon the generosity of his interior, until one day my confidence in his Scotch integrity was rudely shattered; for I discovered that the reason he could hold so much was that he had quietly kicked out his bottom! He continued to accompany me, it is true, but thrust from his high gentlemanly estate, resembling now rather those bleary, dilapidated Glasgow porters that greet one’s arriving vessel, his frail form, like theirs, begirt and bandaged in order to support the few light belongings I now dared to entrust to his feebleness.

Meanwhile, the strength of my yellow telescope continued unabated, but so did also its averseness to accommodating my possessions, which daily, all unwittingly and unwillingly, increased. My dapper suitcase had suffered by the way, its neat sides were bruised and staved in, one leather corner was missing, another stood up like an attentive ear. It still smiled, “brave in ragged luck,” but its own America would not have known it. It now appeared that England, and as it happened, rural Devon, must contribute another article to my retinue.

Now, ever since I had touched Great Britain, my unaccustomed eye had been fascinated by a piece of luggage quite new to me. I mean that most British thing, the tin trunk. We have nothing like it in luggage, but we have copied it exactly in cake boxes; the only difference is that the English original has a bulge top and a lock and key. In character my British baggage was much better natured than my American telescope, but in color it was much the same, orange tawny; it had grown very easy for me to spot my belongings in the miscellany of the luggage van.

These representatives of the American, Scotch, and English nations followed in my wake from Southampton to St. Malo, and perhaps their company need never have been increased on the continent if in Brittany I had not bought a pair of sabots, life size. Nothing so unaccommodating as sabots! Seemingly each was big enough to sleep in, but if I attempted to pack the inside of one, behold, it would hold nothing at all; it was built to hold a foot, and if it couldn’t have a foot, it would have nothing. In true peasant insolence, each sabot demanded a whole handbag to itself, and, once in, refused to accommodate its substantial bulk to the needs of any of my other possessions. In much difficulty I managed to get across France, but once in Paris, especially in view of certain aristocratic purchases that absolutely refused to consort with wooden shoes, the need of still a fifth hand-piece was evident.

Paris luggage, like a Paris lady, is built to show a pleasing exterior. Diversion rather than utility is its motive. My Paris handbag still preserves its suggestion of perpetual picnic. It looks as if it were always just off for a Sunday in the Bois. It is a woven wicker thing, exactly like an American lunch-basket, vastly magnified. The handle must be grasped from the top, and is not the handy side appendage of all American grips. I never look at it without seeing within dozens upon dozens of boiled eggs and sandwiches. As a matter of fact, it has never held anything of the sort; rather it carried my new Parisian costume safely from Paris to New York.

By dint of fast and furious touring through Belgium I managed not to acquire anything more to pack or to be packed, but in Holland once again I fell. I was within a few days of sailing when I visited Alkmaar. There a tall polyglot young Dutchman showed me through a most delicious cheese factory. Innocent and round, ruby or orange, smiled those cheeses down at me from their long shelves. My guide gave me to eat. Thus it was that the last thing I bought on the other side was—cheeses! Oh, he assured me, they were perfectly well behaved; even had they so desired they could not get out of their strong cases; no more innocent gift to be taken home to appreciative friends. That Dutchman understood American credulity better than he did the American language. Those cheeses did not stay in their cases. They came out and performed in all ways after the manner of cheeses. Now throughout my trip, whatever inconveniences I might suffer by reason of possessions acquired, I could never make up my mind to abandon any. Having bought them, I did not desert my cheeses, but it became increasingly apparent that they would have to travel in a home of their own, together with such of my goods as would not be corrupted by evil communications. I purchased my last bit of luggage in Rotterdam. It was a gray canvas bag, in shape like a dachshund without the appendages. It was capable of as much lateral expansion as a Marken fisherman. It received and held the cheeses, but frankly, so that their contour was clear to the eye. To all appearances I was taking home a bushel of turnips out of brave little Holland.

I embarked at Rotterdam, and for ten days sank into that state of coma to which ocean travel stimulates me. It was not till we had touched the Hoboken dock that I became once more acutely alert. I had donned my Paris traveling dress, had walked through the great shed until I found my letter X, and then turned about to wait with the rest for the arrival of my luggage. Then for the first time realization overwhelmed me. I was waiting for my bags, my bags; those six disreputable traveling companions would here and now seek me out and claim my society, right here in America, with V and W to right of me, Y and Z to left, my haughty steamer acquaintance, looking on! Over on the other side one is not known by one’s baggage, but here one is! I had faced many a white continental porter with nonchalance, but with which one of my motley collection in my hand could I face the black Pullman porter of my own country? I cowered with shame, so slowly they arrived, each several one of the six, tediously threading its way to X, never losing itself, never losing me, always hunting me down! The joy of home-coming was turned to gall. I saw V and W, Y and Z, turn away their faces. To my eyes each several hand-piece looked more bizarre than the last. Which one should I select to accompany me on an American railroad? Which of the motley crew would least endanger the respectability of a lady traveling alone in an American