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exactly how much to tip a Paris concierge, and has been to many of the places she deals in. "Don't you vorry," she said. "I'll find you a ship. There are some lovely Dutch ships running from South America."
    I pointed out that we were in North America.
    But she already had her head buried in folders, with a thumb tucked in a loose-leaf book six inches thick consisting entirely of ship schedules. "I'll put together a tour," she said absently.
    Which she did. It took a month to do it, a wastebasketful of letters, many toll calls and cables, and recasting of the overall plan as drastic as deciding to go around the world eastward rather than west when it appeared that the tentative schedule could not be made to jibe in Singapore. But she did it. Planning a world tour by various means of transportation (rather than by a single tourist ship) is a project as complicated and unlikely as organizing a political campaign or trying to get six children off to Sunday School, all clean and neat and all on time. It calls for patience, expert knowledge, and optimism.
    To attempt it yourself unassisted in the belief-entirely mistaken-that your costs will be less is as foolish as taking out your own appendix. But not as thrifty, for the travel agent collects not from you but from the transportation and hotel companies with no increase in price to you. But if you take masochistic pleasure in doing everything for yourself, go right ahead with either enterprise; the results should be interesting to others.
    I can hear that plaint from the lady in the back of the hall: she wouldn't think of going to a tourist bureau; she doesn't want to find herself in a crowd of dreadful tourists; she wants to go to the out-of-the-way places.
    "Tourist-(n.)-a person traveling for pleasure."-The Thorndike-Barnhart Desk Dictionary.
    You may disclaim the horrid title, lady, but you are a tourist, once you leave your home town for any reason other than removal of domicile or business. That terrible couple over there with the impossible child (and he is a nasty little brat, isn't he?) resents your presence, your table manners, and your personality quite as much as you detest and despise them. You are all tourists together, so why not relax and enjoy it?
    Nevertheless the yearning to go to out-of-the-way places where you will not be annoyed by other tourists and where you yourself will annoy only the natives is a legitimate one-in which case Thomas Cook and American Express and Mrs. Feyock and the other travel experts know much more about such places than you are likely to be able to learn unassisted. There are such places and many of them are lovely. Regrettably all of them are woefully short on inside plumbing, comfortable beds, and drycleaning service. Such amenities are directly linked to dollars, pesos, and pounds; they are provided only when there are enough tourists to make it pay.
    Sometimes the lack of mass-production comforts is offset by native servants willing to work fourteen hours a day for small change in American money to provide you by hand with the machine comforts you are used to. You may be lucky enough to hear of such a place and go to it before the natives are "spoiled" (i.e., before they realize that they are being exploited). If you hear about such and want that sort of thing, go at once; if you read about it, buy your ticket the day the magazine appears. Otherwise you will arrive at the painful transition period when the place is already bursting with tourists, the prices have gone up, and the plumbing, et cetera, has not yet been installed.
    Carry with you your own mosquito netting, soap, penicillin, toilet tissue, and a stomach rugged enough for any sort of cooking; out-of-the-way places have an infuriating habit of being out of the way. The unspoiled paradise, unknown to tourists and unlisted with the travel bureaus, exists in vast numbers throughout the globe. Africa, South America, Mexico, and Canada abound with them; even my home state of