The Check System

The American constituíiou has been cnlled a system of ebecks. So in American life. When yon want to travei, you I give yonr bapgage to tbe porter of your hotel, and he gives you a check in retnrn. At the station yon reclaim it with the check and pass it in at a ranter and rooeive another check. As you approach your destination another funotionary comes aloug the train, takes your check and gives you another check in its place. He fishes out yonr baggage and convoya it to yonr hotel - for a coiisideration. Yon have left your third and last check at the office of the hotel when you enter it, aud thence it is delivered up on receipt of the baggage. At first you blees this arrangement aa i the salvation of the traveler. Alter a I few weeks of it thetyrauny of the check I becomes so galling that you begin to long for the fine old English method of dumping down your goods in front of a porter and leaving them to find the way tbemselves. You woald even hail it as a persoual triumph if some of your baggage would gefc lost. But it never does. Sometimos it arrivés late, bat it always arrivés. Yet it deldom arrivés in the shape in wbich it started, if that is any consolation. They who have to do with bag gage see to that. Yon very soon discover why Americana carry their goods in ironclad trunks, and why it is madness for anybody to do anything else. 1 started out, like au idiot, with a íiew leather portmauteau. ïhey ripped the stout brass lock off the first week - aot for plunder, apparently, but simply becauseit is the traditionof the service. They punched it and kicked and danced on it. In softer hours, wheo literary inspiration came, they wrote ou it. My portruanteau today is an epitome of the politioal sentiment oí fiij TTuited ytates froru New York to San Francisco. As a historical document it is beyond prioe, and I aru eontoivplatiug the gift of it to the library of congress at Washington. As a portmanteau it bas both feet in the grave. The system of checks is not oonfined to travelers' lugage. The conductor of the train passes careiessly to and fro asking for your ticket and giving you a check in return, or asking for your check and retiirning your ticket, If yon hand your stick to :; boy in a hotel while yon write your name in the register, he dashes off to stow it away in some secret place and returns triumphant with a check. In the very hotel bar, when you buj' sevenpence ha'porth of whisky you get a check and walk two yards across the bar to pay at a dusk. But the apotheosis of the check is at Niágara. When you go down to the Cave of the Wiuds, you strip off all your clothes aud leave them, as well as your valuables, in a tin box with the attendant. Then you go down to battle with the cataract attired only in a suit of pyjamas, a suit of oilskins and a check lashed arouud your neck and rising and falling with the beating of your beart. No wonder the American speaks of death as "handing in bis checks." It is only by death that he eau rid himself of tbem.