Second--A trunk is the most costly luxury known to European travel. If I
could sell my small, shrinking and flat-chested steamer trunk--original
value in New York eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents--for what it
cost me over on the other side in registration fees, excess charges,
mental wear and tear, freightage, forwarding and warehousing bills,
tips, bribes, indulgences, and acts of barratry and piracy, I should
be able to laugh in the income tax's face. In this connection I would
suggest to the tourist who is traveling with a trunk that he begin his
land itinerary in Southern Italy and work northward; thereby, through
the gradual shrinkage in weight, he will save much money on his trunk,
owing to the pleasing custom among the Italian trainhands of prying it
open and making a judicious selection from its contents for personal use
and for gifts to friends and relatives.
Third--For the sake of the experience, travel second class once; after
that travel first class--and try to forget the experience. With the
exception of two or three special-fare, so-called de-luxe trains, first
class over there is about what the service was on an accommodation,
mixed-freight-and-passenger train in Arkansas immediately following the
close of the Civil War.
Fourth--When buying a ticket for anywhere you will receive a cunning
little booklet full of detachable leaves, the whole constituting a
volume about the size and thickness of one of those portfolios of
views that came into popularity with us at the time of the Philadelphia
Centennial. Surrender a sheet out of your book on demand of the
uniformed official who will come through the train at from five to seven
minute intervals. However, he will collect only a sheet every other
trip; on the alternate trips he will merely examine your ticket with the
air of never having seen it before, and will fold it over, and perforate
it with his punching machine and return it to you. By the time you reach
your destination nothing will be left but the cover; but do not cast
this carelessly aside; retain it until you are filing out of the
terminal, when it will be taken up by a haughty voluptuary with
whiskers. If you have not got it you cannot escape. You will have to
go back and live on the train, which is, indeed, a frightful fate to
contemplate.
Fifth--Reach the station half an hour before the train starts and claim
your seat; then tip the guard liberally to keep other passengers out of
your compartment. He has no intention of doing so, but it is customary
for Americans to go through this pleasing formality--and it is expected
of them.
Sixth--Tip everybody on the train who wears a uniform. Be not afraid of
hurting some one's feelings by offering a tip to the wrong person.
There will not be any wrong person. A tip is the one form of insult that
anybody in Europe will take.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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