Punch, or the London Charivari

s why that poor man was carrying a typewriter. I wonder why everybody else in the Tube carries an "attaché-case." It has been calculated that if all the attaché-cases which get on to the train at Hammersmith at 9 A.M. were left on the platform, six men or twelve women or three horses could take their place in every car. That means about ninety more men or one-hundred-and-eighty more women or forty-five more horses could leave Hammersmith between 9 A.M. and 9.30. So that if attaché-cases were forbidden the traffic problem would be practically solved.

Why shouldn't they be forbidden? It depends, of course, on what is inside the cases; and nobody knows that for certain. But one can guess. I have been guessing for a long time. At first I thought they were full of very confidential papers. In the old days the attaché-case was the peculiar trademark of private secretaries and diplomats and high-up people like that. Even attachés carried them sometimes. The very lowest a man