With a Disquisition on the Science of Rooting for What You Have Packed

Atraveler is a person who escorts baggage. He may think he is taking a trip for business or pleasure, but, whether he be journeying from Brooklyn to Hoboken with one trunk, or touring Europe with a bevy of handbags, his real occupation consists in chaperoning impedimenta.

There is something almost touching about the way in which he looks after his little flock—seeing that they are properly tagged, counting them anxiously to be sure that none are missing, defending them from the cruelty of expressmen, pleading for them at the feet of customs inspectors. He has care for the humblest satchel. If it be lost he will set down three full suitcases and seek after it until he finds it.

Not that he is actually fond of his luggage. But he has packed it and brought it with him, and therefore he is under obligation to it; is responsible for its well-being.

He knows in his heart that many of the clothes he has brought will never be worn, and that most of the books he has stowed away—dry looking volumes which he long ago decided he ought to read but which somehow he has never got 'round to—will not be opened. Nevertheless, he has these things with him, and it is his duty to cherish them and see them safely back home again.

As he unpacks his belongings at the first stop, he wonders what his state of mind could have been when he packed them. Why had he deemed his shaving brush de trop? And why, oh why, had he abandoned his faithful slippers? Had he imagined that two left-hand rubbers constituted a pair? Five hats and caps are all very nice, but why did he put in only four handkerchiefs? And even an array of fifty-seven neckties affords poor consolation for the total absence of socks. As for the bathing-suit, the morning tub would be the only place where he could use that, and even there it would hardly seem appropriate.

Anybody with the price of a ticket can travel from one city to another, but it takes a real genius to pack a trunk. The art must be practiced in its purity; there must be no mixing of the pancake (or roll-'em-up) style with the flapjack (or spread-'em-out-flat) style. Such eclecticism is pernicious.

Considered from another point of view, packing is a fascinating game. You put all sorts of objects in a trunk, the baggage man churns them thoroughly, and then you take them out again and try to guess what they are. You meet with a hundred different surprises. For instance, you never would have dreamed that a derby hat could turn inside out, or that a single suit could acquire ninety-three separate and distinct creases, or that a book could swallow a mirror and have indigestion from it, or that a bottle of ink inside seven wrappings could break and assert itself over a pile of shirts and a month's supply of collars.

But the great paradox of packing is that a trunk is always full when you close it and always three-quarters empty when you open it. The trunk that nothing but violent stamping will shut is the very trunk that, a few hours later, bounces your possessions about like beans in a rattle; so that when you lift the lid again you find them huddled forlornly in a corner, exhausted and battered from their shuttle-istics.

Another peculiarity is that nothing that you want is where you think it is. The garment that you clearly remember putting in the right-hand front corner of the top tray is sure to turn up at last in the opposite part of the bottom. Indeed, sooner will the Sphinx give up her secret than the trunk give up the thing you are looking for. To dig up de profundis a shoehorn that you need is a more remarkable achievement than to unearth a new Pompeii.

Rooting is a science. Suppose, for instance, you wish to locate a pair of scissors without disturbing the general order. You begin by classifying the scissors in your mind, in order that you may calculate their position in the trunk. You consider them with reference to the following scheme of arrangement, which you recite as if you were an elevator boy in a department store:

1. Main Tray. Shirts, collars, hats, handkerchiefs, and toilet articles.

2. Mezzanine Tray. Dress clothes, neckwear, art goods, and bric-a-brac.

3. Basement. Shoes, hardware, suits, underwear, books, medicines, and sporting goods.

Concluding, after due deliberation, that the scissors are equally appropriate to all of these, you start in on the main tray, sliding your palms around the edge as though you were easing ice-cream out of a mold.

No scissors.

You delve deeper, using the back of your hand as a plow-share.

No scissors.

Refusing to be baffled, you leave no garment unturned.

No scissors.

Growing a trifle impatient, you take out the main tray and tackle the mezzanine. This will be a simple matter, because it is so shallow that you have only to feel around the edges.

No scissors.

Perhaps they got shaken into the middle. You burrow there, making considerable work for the clothes-presser.

No scissors.

Now you are genuinely angry. You toss the mezzanine upon the arms of a chair. It is a rocking-chair, and it slides the tray gently forward and deposits it face downward on the floor.

Pretending to ignore this, you plunge both arms into the basement so violently that the lid unclicks and gives you a cowardly blow on the back of the head.

You rise up and vow that this your chattel shall flout you no longer. Seizing it fiercely, you turn it upside down—you dump its contents about the room.

No scissors!

Then there steals into your mind a vision of the above-mentioned cutlery lying on a chiffonier in a room hundreds of miles away—and the realization that they are probably lying there still.