Both passengers and railroad personnel always hover over me like guardian angels. It is true that occasionally over-solicitude upsets me - sometimes literally. Pullman porters, a noble breed of men, in their kind eagerness to get me off the cars and off their hands without casualty, are likely to uncrutch me. When they have the cooperation of a conductor in unloading me - a doubly effective team - they can really work havoc. One on each side, grabbing my arm or my crutch, they frequently unbalance me. I am always safer managing steps or stairs of any kind without assistance. It is disheartening to blast their generosity by ordering them to unhand me. People simply glow with pleasure when they help the handicapped, and I have a theory that it is only decent to let them have their silly fun. So if I think the chances of survival, without broken bones, are about fifty-fifty, I take the gamble and endure the assistance, merely out of politeness.

Once, however, with two of the goodwill boys helpfully heckling me, I quite involuntarily took off from the top step of a Pullman car. By good fortune, plus what I modestly fancy was miraculous agility, I flew through the air with the greatest of ease and made a perfect three-point landing - one foot, two crutches. Even though breathless over my own accomplishment, I was able to pull myself together sufficiently to pass out quite an impressive bon mot. I turned to my horrified helpers and said nonchalantly "Don't worry - I always get off that way."

Another thorn in my flesh, who sports a heart of gold, is the over-zealous redcap who spots me invariably as I am being knocked off the train by a porter. He dashes off like a breeze to get me a wheel chair. He then offers to convey me right through the station out to the cab stand. Of course, I don't want or need a wheel chair, and even urged on by my obliging nature, I can't bring myself to crawl into one.

On only one occasion did I ever succumb to a redcap with the standard equipage. This occurred during the first stage of my trip to Europe on my stopover between trains in Chicago. This hero to whom I fell prey had a most appealing, smiling, shiny black face under his white hair. In spite of the retarded gait of his advanced years, he pulled up promptly with his profferer transportation. He was so obviously pleased with himself and so genuinely solicitous of me that I couldn't flip off his beaming light by refusing to ride. With resignation and a great show of clumsiness, I got myself into the wheel chair, with both the train porter and the redcap behaving like derricks. I paid an extra dollar in tips for my embarrassment and the drayage I didn't want.

"You just sit back now and relax," the good Samaritan cooed at me on the way to the passengers' gate. "You're gonna get along just mighty fine. Is somebody gonna meet you, Honey?"

Somebody was gonna meet her, Honey admitted with some disquietude. My aunt was right there behind the gate. She saw me as I approached in my stylish chaise and grabbed at the iron grill work as if she were about to rip it out by its tap roots. She visibly paled.

"Oh, my dearl My dearl You've had an accident!" she gasped. "What happened to you?"

"There, there, Auntie," I soothed as I rolled my eyes roguishly in an effort to let her in on my harmless ruse. "It's really all right. I've just lost my leg, that's all. But I'm going to get along just fine."

Auntie, dear soul, was not tuned in to catch the most blatant innuendoes that morning. "Heavenly Fatherl" she screeched for all Chicago to hear. "Lost the other one?"

I picked up my fine, genuine old ancestral foot, to relieve her mind, but she still looked ready to take off.

''Now, don't you go grieving this young lady," the nice old redcap reproved. "She's only got one foot and I expect it would'a been better if she'd told you when it happened so it wouldn't'a been such a shock to you, but you'll only upset her if you carry on like this. God moves in mysterious ways." The old boy was quite a philosophical gentleman. Of course, poor, mystified Auntie had been notified promptly enough of my loss thirteen years before.

"As soon as we get in your car, I'll tell you all about it, Auntie." I twisted my mouth into a horrible grimace, winked my eye broadly, and shook my head. Apparently the combination of contortions finally made some sense - or rather nonsense, from Auntie's point of view.

"Oh, you are simply terrible," she announced in hex relief. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You always were a difficult child."

If Auntie had taken a good look at the redcap at that precise moment, she would, I am surer have fled in fright. He had her death warrant plainly written on his face. Her lack of feeling even shocked the philosophy right out of the dear old man.

I can imagine him sitting among his fellow burden-bearers. "You sure run into all kinds in this game," he probably begins. "But the queerest character I ever saw - barring none -" And then, I bet Auntie gets a good going over.

My visit with Auntie was off to a bad start. During my four-hour layover in Chicago, she wouldn't even give me a peaceful country-girl's gawk at Marshall Field's finery. She spent the entire time lecturing me on how a lady conducted herself on a tour.

With horrible detail she covered the subjects of the insidious evils of strong drink, cardsharpers on ships board, and the general depravity of the human race. Her final admonition as she put me on the Capitol Limited for Washington, where I was going to get a glimpse of the Government, was, "Now watch your step. Don't ever speak to a stranger - especially a man." I believe she expected me to spend the next six months in dead silence.

I had a charming male friend staked out in the club car, however, before we got to the Englewood station. Only by crass discourtesy or by investing in a compartment and never leaving it, even for a breath of air or breakfast, can a crippled traveler keep himself aloof. My friend was a gentleman who came under the category of honorable opponent in the Ham and Legs game. He was a United States attorney and he had a friend, a Senator, whose little boy had just suffered an accident which necessitated the amputation of his leg. I always figure that only the most respectable people have handicapped friends or family. Besides, few individuals ever plan to do wrong to a poor little Nell who so obviously has already had plenty of wrong done her. Crutches are a great protection.

When he invited me to dinner in the diner, I hesitated only long enough to tell him about my quaint aunt. "She told me just before we pulled out of the station not to take up with strange men. But my aunt is very naive. She hasn't been around much."

"And you, my dear young lady, are very sophisticated, I can see that," he answered. "You look as if you'd just been 'round and 'round." This put me in a genial mood. I even smoked a cigarette to prove to him that his confidence in my worldliness was not misplaced. We had a fine dinner. The next morning when I got off the train in Washington, however, my friend apparently had had a change of heart about my sophistication.

"I don't think you should run around this strange city alone," he said. He carefully arranged my sight-seeing, lunched me at the Cosmos Club, and personally stowed me on the Philadelphia train in the afternoon. Moreover, he gave me a stack of his personal cards on which he had carefully written out for me an introduction to somebody woefully respectable in almost every capital of Europe and one for the captain of the Leviathan, the ship on which I was to sail. "You may not need these," he said, "but it vill make me easier in my mind for you to have them. Now watch your step and don't take up with strangers."

He blasted my faith. He might just as well have been a blood-brother to Auntie.

On the train to Philadelphia, I picked up with another interesting, kind stranger. He was from an entirely different social level from my Washington protector. He was a former taxi driver from Brooklyn. He had been forced to give up his career when he suffered an accident in which he lost his left arm. He wore a hook. He was very cheerful about his fate, however, since he had become a traveling salesman which he regarded as a good leap up the ladder. He told me to call him "Elmer." We had a dandy time confiding the stories of our lives to each other. He had a wife whom he referred to as "Maze" - short for Maizie, I suppose - and seven children all devoutly named for saints. He told me exactly how to have a big time in "Philly."

When we arrived he helped me locate my uncle in the Philadelphia station. Whenever possible, my family had carefully posted a relative where I was scheduled to light. Proudly I introduced Elmer to my uncle who displayed a certain cold restraint. When the father of the seven saints offered to take us to a nice little speak-easy near by, Uncle became actively antagonistic and spirited me away. I waved back, however, and called "Good-by, Elmer."

My understanding friend lifted his hook in a jovial gesture, yelled "Olive oil, Louise," and implied by a genial wink that he knew what I was in for - and no hard feelings. Uncle shuddered like a victim of the shakes.

Then began two days of lectures. Uncle was very broad minded and sensibly tolerant. He admitted readily enough that I couldn't seal my lips with adhesive for six months. He assured me, in fact, that it was perfectly all right to speak to strangers on trains and boats. But, he firmly pointed out, I must watch for symbols of respectability in men. I might fraternize, to the cozy extent of discussing the weather, with the following, listed in preferred order: gentlemen of the clergy whom I could identify by their collars, Kiwanians whose identity he made plain by displaying his own lapel button, and Masons. Generally speaking, he distrusted women, especially those traveling alone. A bad lot! He confessed, however, that it might be safe to converse with nuns.

"Oh, Boy, Unc!" I chirped happily. "Am I going to have myself a time!"

He let me have a gander at the Liberty Bell and bought me some excellent seafood fodder in a place called Bookbinder's, which has nothing to do with the publishing business but means restaurant in "Philadelphian." The rest of the time, he showed me around socially among some worthy citizens of Chestnut Hill who clucked at me over their lovely china teacups and assured me I was a fine, brave girl to flit about all by myself on my crutches on treacherous trains and ships and such like. They, too, knew the chorus to the old refrain, "But watch your step!" Uncle and his friends, I suspect, had lived too long in close proximity to the Liberty Bell. At least, it struck me that they bore one delicate stamp of similarity - just the tiniest touch of crack.

I had a good, wholesome time in Philadelphia - which led me to the conclusion that I'd contrive cleverly to avoid the New York family contingent. Relatives were so overstimulating. I was afraid I'd give up the whole trip and hunt up a good lively Sunday School picnic as a substitute if I were exposed to any more of my righteous kin. I was supposed to wire a cousin in Rye of my train schedule from Philadelphia. He had promised Mother to come down to Manhattan to meet me and then watch over me like a fond father until I sailed four days later. I hadn't seen this hazy sprig on the family tree in some fifteen years and, understandably, my memory of him was blurred.

So I only pretended to wire him. Uncle put me on the train, with one last warning that rang a strangely nostalgic note: "Watch your step now." He was cheer-fully relieved to be disposed of me, I suspect. Triumphantly I took over New York all by myself.

I discovered later on, however, that the one relative I avoided so assiduously was a very smooth and handsome piece of goods who must have gotten into the family under false pretenses or by some miscarriage of cargo on the part of a careless stork. He tracked me down before I sailed, sent me a brace of orchids, and the only admonition he administered was in the form of a neat little list of French and German wines which he commissioned me, with a fifty-dollar bill, to taste in his honor.

"Won't I get drunk?" I asked with breathless awe.

"Not on fifty dollars spread around," he assured me. "And what if you do? If you stagger, everyone will just say, 'Look at that poor cripple, what a hard time she has walking on those crutches. "My God!' he chortled, warming to the thought, 'What a handy alibi they'd make."