or take out of
libraries, would misrepresent us if supposed to be all we had or loved
to read. There is in more of these homes than perhaps we suspect a shelf
with its well-thumbed "Pilgrim's Progress," its "Robinson Crusoe" with
one cover gone, its odd volume of Waverley or Dickens, its copy of Burns
or Longfellow, its row of school histories and science, and its pile of
magazines.

At certain hours, when the trains are due, the basket brigade is
reinforced by the carpet-bag battalion; and a crowd of home-coming or
out-going travellers is a never-ending source of sympathetic and
imaginative study to the leisurely looker-on. What an anachronism that
word "carpet-bag" has become, by the way! I saw not long ago on the
ferry-boat a genuine and literal specimen, which carried back my
thoughts for a generation to the day when bags were really made of
carpet and the most fastidious social Bourbon did not disdain to carry
them. They flourished in the age of shawls, and came in not long after
the epoch of "gum" shoes. They were of every conceivable pattern, from
the sober symphony in brown to a gorgeous wealth of color that might vie
with the most audacious wall-paper of an aesthetic age. This "belated
traveller" of a carpet-bag had all the appearance of a faded and
bedraggled gentility,--was, in fact, a veritable tramp among luggage. It
sagged down as it stood on the floor. It ran here and there into
strings, as of shoes untied and coat fastened together by twine in lieu
of buttons. And it was trampy with mouldy discoloration and
travel-stains. It was of vast dimensions, and, as was always the way
with carpet-bags, bulging in all directions with its contents. I was not
surprised to discover, through its orifice, that it had long ceased to
be a receptacle for clothing and was filled with honest workman's tools.
Burglars, the police-reports tell us, affect the carpet-bag for their
jimmies and the like, but in such case it may be depended on to be as
reputable in appearance and as close-mouthed as the last defaulting
treasurer or trustee. The modern luggage is a type of advanced thought,
if not civilization, whether we consider the Saratoga trunk, the
Russia-leather satchel, the school-boy's knapsack, or the commercial
traveller's double-locked valise. There is "nothing like leather:" men
live now in their trunks, and America's proudest contribution to the
world is the railway-check.

But my boat bumps on the shore, and I must