On most of the English roads no receipt is given for baggage, and the traveler must take the chances of its loss. A label showing its destination is pasted on your trunk, and when you are at the journey's end you must go to the platform where the contents of the van have been discharged, and pick out your property. Attempts have been made to introduce the American checking system in England, but the English are too conservative to take up with such a Yankee notion.
Ticket and baggage arranged, the traveler is permitted to go to the waiting-room. There the intending passengers (no others are admitted) are huddled together till within a few minutes of the departure of the train, and very often the room is overcrowded, and cheerless in the extreme. Passengers are not allowed on the platforms till everything is ready, and sometimes there is hardly time for all to get comfortably seated before the train moves. Latterly some of the roads have made a reform in this matter; the _Paris, Lyon & Mediterranee_ was the first to relax the rules and allow passengers to go direct to the platform, after passing the supervisor of tickets, instead of shivering or crowding in the waiting-room. On some lines the porters are not permitted to enter the waiting-rooms, and passengers must carry their own satchels and other impedimenta, while on others the porters can go direct to the carriages, and secure desirable seats for actual or expected return in cash.
On account of the high tariff for extra baggage, travelers on the Continent usually carry more in their hands than would be the case with the same people in America. Parcels may be stowed under the seats or in the racks overhead, but no one is allowed to have anything that will be an inconvenience to others in the same compartment. This rule is not rigidly enforced, as will often be seen; the old woman with six bandboxes and three bundles is as common in Europe as she was traditionally in America, and very often it is impossible for eight passengers to dispose of all their "traps" without holding some of them on their knees.
Railway fares are much higher on the eastern side of the Atlantic than on the western, and those of England are dearer than the fares on the Continent. The English fares are threepence, twopence, and one penny a mile for the respective classes; _i.e._, about six cents, four cents, and two cents of American currency. In France the rate is calculated at twelve centimes, the kilometre which is equivalent to very nearly twenty centimes (four cents), the mile. This is for first-class; third-class is half the price of first-class, and second-class midway between the two. Italian fares are a trifle higher than those of France, while those of Belgium, Bavaria, Sweden, Norway, and Germany are lower. A rough calculation of the cost of travel by railway may be made by allowing four cents to the mile for first-class, and the corresponding rates for the other classes. Another mode of ready reckoning is to allow five francs (one dollar) per hour for the time required for transit from one city to another by first-class ordinary trains, and six francs an hour for the fast expresses. For example, the fare from Paris to Marseilles is one hundred and six francs, twenty centimes, and the distance is eight hundred and sixty-three kilometres, or five hundred and thirty-nine miles. There is a train called the "Rapide" that runs through in fifteen hours, and makes only eight stoppages; the ordinary express takes a trifle over twenty hours for the same journey, and the so-called "Directe" train requires twenty-three hours. The direct train contains carriages of the three classes, but the express and "Rapide" are exclusively first-class. Any one who is curious in arithmetic can apply the rules given above, and will find that they bring the result near enough for rough estimates.