I might have it ready in any emergency. These officers were very
accommodating to me afterwards, however, during the time that I waited for
the next train for Utrecht. After having had quite a social chat with
them, I asked them what they would have done with me if I could not have
produced them a passport from the government of my country. "Well," said
one of them, "we would have been obliged to subject you to an examination,
and if your answers would have satisfied the committee, you would have
been allowed to pass on."



Cloak-Rooms.


In connection with the railway stations, wherever I traveled in Europe,
there are "cloak-rooms," in which the baggage of the travelers is stored
away. It costs 1 to 2 cents to have a package, parcel, umbrella or satchel
deposited into one of these, and then the depositor receives a receipt or
check for his luggage, which he must present when he wishes to have it
again. But Holland offers none of these excellent accommodations, else I
would have spent a day more among these Flanders. When I came to
Amsterdam, I was immediately assailed by a herd of porters, each anxious
to take my satchel into charge. It had been my rule to carry it to the
cloak-room myself, but here I could not find one! After a vehement
struggle with the fierce porters, one of them who could say "Yes," in
German, and who nodded his head when I asked him whether he would take it
to a cloak-room, took it and carried it into the station, a distance of
about fifty feet. But they kept no cloak-room as I observed when it was
not placed into a special apartment for the purpose. It did not seem
homelike at all to me, so I asked the agent whether he would give me a