The age-herald., 1899-06-06
THE NOTES OF
 A TRAVELLER

and 1Oggy, trying hard 10 drlzzlei put InlS is the beginning of the Whitsuntde holi- days and the big landing stage at Liverpool Is black with excursionists who are going somewhere, or with those who want to see somebody else go somewhere, as our giant ship, the Cunard Etruria, Sl27 tons, swings around at the urgent insistenee of the puffing big boat and debauches her crowd. There goes Miss Ada Rehan look ing grey and tired, and Augustin Daly recovering from his pneumonia, and Bishop Potter's little grand daughter who had more fun than the balance of the folks playing hide and seek, and swinging from the ropes. Here comes a group of big English youths, slow in thought speech and movement, who drawl and turn up their trousers, but who will wade ten miles and walk fifty to shoot something, and who are good natured and ready to do anything at duty's call. That solid, middle-aged man who "gets left" by the London spe- cal, which whirls away his trunk to Lon don in bond whilst he is waiting customs examinations here, is assistant editor of the New York World, and it makes him tired to wait till midnight and to know that when he gets there Sunday morning he must wait till Tuesday for his trunk, Monday being a national holiday. That slim, spectacled young man spent last sum- mer with a dispatch boat and staff in the hot and troubled Caribbean waters for the Chicago Record and now goes for his paper to Russia, Siberia, Corea, and the Dutch East Indies. This old gentleman has quit building cars near Louisville and has spent fourteen years in travel and the accumula- tion of curios. If you want any pointers on Alaskan glaciers or Honolulu volcanoes, Norway carioles or Japanese jnrikishas, Irish cliffs or Fills dates, English colleges or Benares temples, the stones of Baaibec or the eastern holy fire at the church of the Holy Sepulchre he can give them. Is the legend of the Wandering Jew repeated or is it lex talionis that one who spent his life in helping others to travel should now revolve himself as ceaselesssly as car wheel?
 So we land at last and our straw hat from Alabama >)oks strangely out of place; two-thirds of the Saturday evening crowd wear caps and all the straw chapeaux are monopolised by the other sex. Could not wke men protect our scalps and be more independent of weather and less subservant to colds in the head if we concentrated our hirsute abilities and foreswore boards?
 Carefully putting our cigars at the top of our bag to save trouble, the inspector passes our trunk without opening, and our four-wheeler clatters over the clean-paved streets and we miss the train to Glasgow by five minutes. This is trying, as they run no day trains on Sunday in Scotland. and English conservatism has not yet put op hat TiUarnOOl and (IlaS- gow The officials are wonderfully civil. however, and as the sleepers belong to the railroad company the local superintendent hunts around to find one if possible, lying around loose, and tells us he would gladly put it on if he had one. This for the one passenger, Credat Pullman! The conductor of the London sleeper shows us over it. ladies and gentlemen at opposite ends-no curtains in front, no upper berths let down except by request of all concerned say for the concentration of a party. He listens with incredulity to the statement that in America the uppers are let down, even the unoccupied.
 But hunger presses in this cold air, where so many calores are used in maintaining vital heat, and we make our supper off one claw of one crab. It did not come from the gulf but from Norway, and the claw measured from our elbow to the base of the fingers; and the two pincers at the end of the claw were each !the length of the middle finger.
 We vnst the Young Mems Christian asso- citation and find a large well supplied read ing room with insufficient light, so go to the regular "mens meeting." This turns 11f to ba an o1d and men and women. A spectacled brother from Brazil denounces more or less all who are not foreign missionaries, female choir renders concerted music, an address and music are promised for next Saturday night by Congo blacks, and the audience gives vociferous applause to each number on the programme, whether speech or song. All this looks strange to the American be- liever in work for young men by young men,"
 What a sight on the streets. People ten abreast on every sidewalk-500 on every corner. Vendors and vendors of songs, books, matches, toys, fruit, notions, etc., throng the streets. The huge policeman Chose giants that Caleb found at Garth must have started running at the fall of Jericho and never stopped till they got here) ignore the few beggars who at other times would be run in Auction sales of cheap watches are numerous and the store windows are unapproachable where "dia- mond" rings sell for $4 upwards. Why are the poor so constantly swindled out of their little surplus? They shop around with pa tience and acumen for food and clothing, and then throw prudence to the winds in disposlng of their little surplus in liquor. betting, gambling, shows of every kind, and ornaments. The negroes in Jefferson county waste enough money every year to buy the homes in which they live.
 Twenty ears ago we had never seen a banana in England; now they sold in the streets at one cent each. Hats cost 50 per cent. of our prices; shoes on the contrary are 25 to 50 per cent dearer At midnight the throng begins to lessen, but when our train starts at l a. m there are still enough pedestrians to make one won der who they are and whither they go. And as the last trains for the night pull out 1t is pitiful to see groups of working men, and tired women dragging little chil- Iaff