Jasper County Democrat, Volume 4, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 June 1901 — SOME SMUGGLING STORIES. [ARTICLE]

SOME SMUGGLING STORIES.

Interesting Chit-Chat with a Foreigg i Customs Officer. I have had some interesting chitchat with the head of a Beige-Dutch custom house. He related to me how at his frontier station he had a tiff with Saraji Bernhardt. She had been a good deal spoiled at The Hague a and refused to alight from her saloon carriage. The refusal was not made in her voixd’or. The underling who had had to deal with her went to His chief, who approached her, hat in hand, and almost bent in two. He acted as though she were entitled out of her theater to the royal honors due to her on the stage as Marie de Ncubourg. Th is did h of m olTifylfef: As he could not Use force, as though she were a French deputy or an Irish M. P., he went to the railway stationniaster and required that S. Ik's saloon carriage should be uncoupled and run into a siding. This was done, with the effect that she alighted, and gave the customs director a piece of her mind. He might have ordered her to be searched, but he did not. However, to prevent her carriage staying all night in the siding, she declared that she had nothing qn her or in her boxes liable to duty. As the train bearing the accomplished actress steamed out of the station she started up, and standing at the window fit le pied de nez. You know the gesture. It is a very con> mon one In the primary schools of Paris. Boys there font le pied de nea behind the backs of school masters. The gesture is made by placing a thumb to the nose, extending the jiand, and placing the thumb of the other hand extended at the end of the fourth finger. Two historical instances of the pied de nez have come to my knowledge. One was made by Pauline Bonaparte behind the back of the Empress Marie Louise; the other was made by a late noble lord, acting as captain of the yeomen of the guard at Buckingham palace, behind the back of the late quec-n. She saw him in a mirror, and with consequences that he had cause to rue for the rest of his life. You see from this that human nature is the same in tragedy queens, in noble lords and in communal school pupils. 1 he customs director I have spoken of is a.good fellow, and he constantly lets ladies pass who he is persuaded have yielded to the temptation to make paltry gains by Smuggling. Ono day a very grand lady indeed, who was coming, via Queenborough and Flushing, from a visit to Quec-n Victoria, seemed to him rather hurried and uneasy. As she stepped into her reserved carriage a big bundle fell from beneath the flounces of her dress. The underlings made a rush for it, and she took care not to claim it, but ensconsed herself in a corner and drew down the blinds. The packet that had fallen was not of enormous value. The goods it contained might perhaps Lave cost five or six pounds more on the continent than in London. It was not possible to return them U her without stopping her for misdemeanor. The underlings who picked up the packed were allowed to keep it. “Attaches,” said the director of customs, “are awfully cheeky. . They pretend to think that diplomatic immunity extends to them. It does not —only to ambassadors. It is a favoritg trick of theirs to speak in French so broken that nobody can understand it. But as all postal and custom house officials in Holland and Belgium speak French, English, Dutch, and many German, this way of defending their smuggled goods is no longer of much use. The nastiest custom houses for foreigners are in Spain. Trunks are completely emptied, and Spaniards have not the cleverness or muscle of a French dounanier in repacking them—always for a fee. The Barcelona manufacturers at the greet frontier stations have agents who spy on the custom house officials and prevent them from becoming slack. But at small frontier stations, where there are no female searchers, ladies and poor women can smuggle in as much as they please. Stockings baggy at the kpees are specially knit to serve as receptacles.—London Truth.