I have never been able yet to solve this problem. If your letter is
sealed, it then appears that it ought not to have been sealed.

If, on the other hand, you have omitted to seal it, that is your
fault. In any case, the letter cannot go as it is. The continental
official brings up the public on the principle of the nurse who sent
the eldest girl to see what Tommy was doing and tell him he mustn't.
Your friend, having wasted half an hour and mislaid his temper for
the day, decides to leave this thing over and talk to the hotel
porter about it. Next to the Burgomeister, the hotel porter is the
most influential man in the continental town: maybe because he can
swear in seven different languages. But even he is not omnipotent.

[The Traveller's one Friend.]

Three of us, on the point of starting for a walking tour through the
Tyrol, once sent on our luggage by post from Constance to Innsbruck.
Our idea was that, reaching Innsbruck in the height of the season,
after a week's tramp on two flannel shirts and a change of socks, we
should be glad to get into fresh clothes before showing ourselves in
civilized society. Our bags were waiting for us in the post-office:
we could see them through the grating. But some informality--I have
never been able to understand what it was--had occurred at Constance.
The suspicion of the Swiss postal authorities had been aroused, and
special instructions had been sent that the bags were to be delivered
up only to their rightful owners.

It sounds sensible enough. Nobody wants his bag delivered up to
anyone else. But it had not been explained to the authorities at
Innsbruck how they were to know the proper owners. Three wretched-