nds over his impedimenta to the baggage
master, who fastens a small metal disk, bearing the destination and a
number, to each package, and gives the owner a duplicate check. The
railway company then becomes responsible for the luggage, and holds it
until reclaimed by presentation of the duplicate check. This system
avoids on the one hand the chance of loss and trouble in claiming
characteristic of the British system, and on the other the waste of
time and expense of the Continental system of printed paper tickets.
On arrival at his destination the traveller may hurry to his hotel
without a moment's delay, after handing his check either to the hotel
porter or to the so-called transfer agent, who usually passes through
the train as it reaches an important station, undertaking the delivery
of trunks and giving receipts in exchange for checks.

Besides the city express or transfer companies, the chief duty of
which is to convey luggage from the traveller's residence to the
railway station or _vice versa_, there are also the large general
express companies or carriers, which send articles all over the United
States. One of the most characteristic of these is the Adams Express
Company, the widely known name of which has originated a popular
conundrum with the query, "Why was Eve created?" This company began in
1840 with two men, a boy, and a wheelbarrow; now it employs 8,000 men
and 2,000 wagons, and carries parcels over 25,000 miles of railway.
The Wells, Fargo & Company Express operates over 40,000 miles of
railway.

Coaching in America is, as a rule, anything but a pleasure. It is true
that the chance of being held up by "road agents" is to-day
practically non-existent, and that the spectacle of a crowd of yelling
Apaches making a stage-coach the pin-cushion for their arrows is now
to be seen nowhere but in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. But the
roads! No European who has done much driving in the United States can
doubt for one moment that the required Man of the Hour is General
Wade.[31] Even in the State of New York I have been in a stage that
was temporarily checked by a hole two feet deep in the centre of the
road, and that had to be emptied _and held up_ while passing another
part of the same road. In Virginia I drove over a road, leading to one
of the most frequented resorts of the State, which it is simple truth
to state offered worse going than any ordinary ploughed field. The
wheels were often almost entirely su