Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, June 4, 1892

A dry‑wit narrator finds himself stranded in Ostend after his luggage disappears at the customs house. He wanders the quayside, watches hotels being painted behind ladders and pails, and exchanges bemused observations with a sympathetic porter and a wary German waiter. The humor springs from his calm insistence that “it’s all right” even as he imagines an evening without a single clean sock.

Through a series of modest misadventures—missing tickets, barbed‑wire‑guarded promenades, and a cramped hotel room adorned with a royal portrait—the piece satirizes the bureaucracy of travel in the late‑Victorian era. The writer’s deadpan commentary turns a simple inconvenience into a gentle critique of the pomp and pratfalls that accompany a journey abroad, inviting listeners to share in the modest absurdity of being a “vacuus viator.