MANNERS OBSERVED WHILE TRAVELLING.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 473, 21 May 1890, Page 4

MANNERS OBSERVED WHILE TRAVELLING.

By Mrs, Frank Leslie. f

Ax observant person, who is in the habit of travelling 1 , cannot fail to notice the vast range of what may be called travelling manners, and soon learns to classify under one; head or another everybody one meets, except those persons not worth thinking about twice—although, on the whole, this exception is useless, for they 'form a class of themselves—the great class of those not worth classifying. -•First, you have the piggish traveller—and if the epithet is not very nice, neither is the person. He is generally an expeiienced voyageur, and has learned exactly what to strike for, which, of course, is not wrong in itself, if he will let all other people have a little chance at what he cannot use.

.In the cars he rushes at once for the centre seat on the shady side, and if he is a big man lie runs down any smaller person lingering in his way ; if it is a woman—for I grieve to say that some of my own sex come 3 under this head—she thrusts her parasol point, her shawl strap parcel, or even an elbow in advance, and makes a "'bayonet charge in the assured and aggressive fa.-hion only possible to women, trained from infancy to expect men to give way before them. The seat secured, the P.T. tills the rack with his or her own hand luggage, and the hook with a coat and lmt, puts on a polo cap, and sits down in a sidelong attitude, with crossed legs, effectually monopolising the whole bench ; then he pulls out a newspaper, retreats behind it, and becomes oblivious of his fellow-pas-sengers. If he is a plethoric person, and firids the car too warm, he presently opens his window, which gives him a pleasant freshness of air, and sends an icy blast into the face ot the lady sitting behind him who dare not remonstrate.

The feminine P. T. generally calls upon some man to lift her parcel into the rack, and keeps a lynx like eye upon him as he does so, lest he abstract any of their contents. Then she arranges all her goods upon the seat beside her, and sometimes turns over the back of the seat in front, so as to monopolise that also. If the car is at all crowded, the conductor is appealed to, and comes to claim this seat for two ladies standing patiently by. The P. T. looks very much surprised and very much displeased, but with ostentatious labour removes all the parcels to the seat beside her, and aits glaring at the backs of the guilty intruders i* a very withering manner. Few conductors, and no passengers, unless another woman of the same genus, have the audacity to claim the seat beside this lady, but occasionally it is done and her wrath is then something fearful to behold. She takes up her parcels with a separate glare at the intruder as she handies each one, she eits as nearly in the middle of the seat as she can, she places the most cornery package she can select between herself and the new comer, she gets down hor umbrella and plants it aggressively between them—she, in short, makes herself so disagreeable that the intruder is very glad to exchange into the first seat that happens to be vacant.

In a parlour car the P. T. has few possibilities of development, but yet can do something by way of turning his chair square in the face of hi 3 next neighbour, consuming fruit and leaving the skins where they will offend sensitive eyes and noses, planting bags and parcels so as to interfere with the movements of the next chair, and insisting on having windows opened and letting in dust, cinders, and draught upon other people."" Once when I travelled in such a car, my next neighbour, a P. T. lady of high development, had a table put between herself and me, and devoted the day to solitaire and occasional lunches, neither ot which amused me. Then there is the fussy traveller, who never can be suited as to the amount of air, of heat, of light, of sun or shade, or of ice water, and who forces all his fellowtravellers to assist at his various efforts after better things. There is the bewildered traveller, generally a woman, who buttonholes the conductor every time ho appears, and with a railway map in hand tremulously points out where she wants to go, and demands when and where she is to make a connection with the train that takes her there, and if he is sure her ticket is right, because it doesn’t say so-and-so. Then there is the loquacious traveller, who will talk to his walking-stick if he can find no one to listen to him, but generally billets himself upon some small, nervous man, who does not know how to shake him off, although looking as wretched as the Wedding Guest in "the clutches of the Ancient Mariner.

Then there is the coarse traveller, who, having money bub no manners, secures a seat in the parlour-car, and with his hat thrust back, his overcoat flung open, his hands in his pockets, chews tobacco, expectorates, talks loud if he has a companion, stares boldly, and finally goes to sleep and snores.

Then there is the stand-off traveller, the lady or gentleman, who, using the public conveyance for their own benefit, resent the fact tliat it is nob a private chariot, and, as it were, placard themselves all over with the notice ‘ No tresspassers allowed !

‘ Spring guns and savage dogs ; • Look over the fence at your peril !’ I have nob observed that this class is usually made up of the people having any very marked claims to unusual deference. In fact, I have, both in our own and foreign countries, eeen persons of Royal and Ducal and Princely birth, or of the highest claims to republican honour, very simple and unassuming ; and I have seen others so recently ascended from the ranks that they had hardly gained the new fooling so arrogant and afraid of plebeian contact that they always take compartments in the cars. This class is a very amusing one to watch and listen to, and I have sometimes been hugely entertained by hearing scraps of conversation relating to my personal friends, of whom the travellers seemed to be the intimates, when I was quite sure they had never exchanged a word with them. On one occasion a lady of this description did me the honour to mention that she was one of my own personal friends and gave various anecdotes and elegant extracts from our mutual life. I waited until the train ran into our station, and then, rising to go, turned and looked her full in the face. I had never seen her, so far as I knew, but I fancy a a horrible suspicion as to my identity flashed into her brain, for she turned as red

as a poppy and hastily moved away. - '• Then, finally, there is the well-bred and courteous traveller. The man or woman • who has lived long enough in the world and travelled over its surface variously enough ! to perceive that there are a good many other people in it with rights equal to his own ; also to learn that while manners as well as

languages differ in different parts of the world, the forms in which he may happen > to have been bred are not necessarily the •-best, or the only ones worth respecting; who has learned that art of mutual concession which oils the wheelß of both public -and priyate conveyances, and is well content not only to live, but to let live. Also the yell-bred traveller, if he has travelled - enough to become cosmopolitan, has learned

that casual courtesy aoes not involve personal acquaintance, and that one may chat all day long with a fellow-passenger and yet never mention one’s name or care to know his, and may meet him the day after with that pleasant, generalising look one casts upon a crowd of strangers. Nothing is more provincial or more gauche., or, in fact; more ridiculous, than the air some very good women unused to travel assumo when some fellow-passenger tries to vary the monotony of the journey with a civil remark, or proffers of a newspaper or a magazine. They bridle, they colour, they turn and stare out of the window, they stammer somo reply, and take no notice of the offered paper; but, snatching up their own, bury themselves in it, familiar contents. The well bred and cosmopolitan traveller, on the other hand, takes stock, without appearing to do so, of the person who makes the approachs and if she finds him, or even her, objectionable, replies civilly but coldly to the remark or question, but does not cap it with another. She declines the offer of book or paper, or of having her window, shut or opened ; she, in fact, shows quietly and without offence that sho doeß not wish to make even a travelling acquaintance, and she almost always is left to herself. If, on the other hand, she finds the stranger congenial and ‘ nice,’ sho enters into con-verfat-ion pleasantly, but with a certain reserve of manner, a tacit establishment of barriers not to be transgressed ; avoids all personal topics, of course asks no questions, and if any are asked of her, shows a certain cool surprise as she puts them gently aside. She makes the way pleasant for herself and for her companion, and at the end of the day, or the two or three days, they part, mutually pleased, and mutually free from all future obligations. A woman who respects herself will be respected by ethers, and a lady may travel Europe and America over in this fashion, and meet with neither insult r.or annoyance, for if any is intended she will perceive it at the first approach, and apparently not seeing it, ward it off. We have spoken of the ridiculous aspect of the provincial traveller who refuses the most courteous and well-intended advance, but one of the most painfully comic sights on the road is the male provincial—generally, I must say, an Englishman or Scotchman—who receives some gentle advance toward conversation on the part of a woman to whom he has not been introduced either with a stony stare of horror and a virtuous gathering of all his forces to repel her unholy wiles, or with a fatuous and delighted grin, and an exasperating air of plunging into an adventure of which it would nob do to tell Mrs Smug when he gets home. A male prude is pretty bad, but a male prude who thinks he is naughty is an object beneath the reach of ridicule. Travelling by sea— ‘ crossing,’ as we call it in this age" of elisions —is a form of travelling bringing its own conditions. It is a longer and more isolated companionship than one gets on land. New York to San Francisco occupies as many days us New York to Liverpool; but then, one’s neighbour may be always getting off at the next station, and one does not see everybody on the train, while on the steamship one can hardly help learning the remotest personal antecedents of every one of the cabin passengers, and one is quite sure of six or seven days to learn them in. These conditions, taken with the monotony of Beene and employment, are so favourable to the rapid growth of acquaintance that one eede to add a great deal of the wisdom of the serpent to the innocence of the dove to keep the matter perfectly in hand. Of course, all the varieties of travellers enumerated in the first sentences of this paper ore to be met with on board ship, but here also is to be found the plausible traveller, the dangerous traveller, the deceptive traveller, andlrom all of these may we be delivered ! The week of transit is to many ot. these men the harvest of the year. Silly heiresses are captured, idle and vain woman are involved in most undesirable intimacies, and careless* inexperienced women get themselves saddled with acquaintances which they do not know how to shake off. Of course, here also the man or woman of the world, the well-bred cosmopolitan, knows how to pluck the flowers and nob get scratched by the thorns; to be civil to some, courteous to others, and really friendly with a few. Sometimes, indeed, valuable and enduring friendships have begun in this manner, and one man I know first met his two wives on board a Cunarder. Bub perhaps, after all, my own system of oceanic travel is the least troublesome.. I secure a good cabin to myself, lay in a supply of books, establish pleasant relations with a steward, and spend the days on deck leaning back on my steamer chair. As one says of very stupid people, ‘They don’t enjoy much, but they escape a good deal of annoyance and suffering.’