so rattled that I could hardly think. I joined
mechanically in the laughter, I assured complete strangers that it
didn't matter at all, I carried through the registration like a man in
a dream, and I tipped everybody I could see. It was as I was thrusting
blindly towards the gates that I first realised that half the people in
the place were sneezing to glory. I was still digesting this
phenomenon when I sneezed myself....

"Still it never occurred to me. There are times when you have to be
told right out. I didn't have to wait long.

"As I presented my ticket, a truck full of luggage was pushed through
the gate next to mine. The porters about it were sneezing bitterly.
'Snuff?' said one of them contemptuously. 'Snuff be blarsted! _It's
pepper!_'

"Whether at that moment my stomach in fact slipped or not I am unable
to say, but the impression that my contents had dropped several inches
was overwhelming.

"I staggered into the Pullman, more dead than alive.... After a large
barley and a small water, I felt somewhat revived, but it was not until
the train was half-way to Dover that I had myself in hand. I was just
beginning under the auspices of a second milk and soda, to consider my
hideous plight, when a genial fool upon the opposite side of the table
asked me if I had 'witnessed the comedy at Victoria.' Icily I
inquired: 'What comedy?' He explained offensively that 'some cuckoo
had tried the old wheeze of stuffing pepper in his trunk to put off the
Customs,' and that the intended deterrent had untimely emerged. My
brothers, conceive my exhilaration. 'The old wheeze.' I could have
broken the brute's neck. When he offered me a filthy-looking cigar
with a kink in it, and said with a leer that I shouldn't 'get many like
that on the other side of the Chops,' I could have witnessed his
mutilation unmoved....

"Still, it's an ill wind.... The swine's words were like a spur. I
became determined to get the stuff through.

"Grimly I watched the case go on to the boat, to the accompaniment of
such nasal convulsions as I had never believed to be consistent with
life itself. By way of diverting suspicion, I asked one of the crew
what was the matter. His blasphemous answer was charged with such
malignity that I found it necessary to stay myself with yet another
still lemonade.

"Arrived at Calais, I hurried on board the train.

"The journey to Paris was frightful. The nearer we got, the more
dishevelle