sweetness, but it is of the same origin as that of those terrible
villagers: it comes from that perfect, that familiar understanding,
that penetrating reciprocal intelligence, of people who have lived
intimately in one another's lives, as people in small communities do. We
are a small community thrown up large, as they say of photographs; we
are not so much a nation as a family; we each of us know just what any
other, or all others, of us intend to the finest shade of meaning, by
the lightest hint."

"Ah!" we breathed, quite as if we were a character in a novel which had
inspired the author with a new phrase. "Now you are becoming
interesting. Should you mind giving a few instances?"

"Well, that is not so easy. But I may say that the friendly ironies
began for us as soon as we were out of the more single-minded keeping of
the ship's stewards, who had brought our hand-baggage ashore, and, after
extracting the last shilling of tip from us, had delivered us over to
the keeping of the customs officers. It began with the joking tone of
the inspectors, who surmised that we were not trying to smuggle a great
value into the country, and with their apologetic regrets for bothering
us to open so many trunks. They implied that it was all a piece of
burlesque, which we were bound mutually to carry out for the
gratification of a Government which enjoyed that kind of thing. They
indulged this whim so far as to lift out the trays, to let the
Government see that there was nothing dutiable underneath, where they
touched or lifted the contents with a mocking hand, and at times carried
the joke so far as to have some of the things removed. But they helped
put them back with a smile for the odd taste of the Government. I do not
suppose that an exasperating duty was ever so inexasperatingly
fulfilled."

"Aren't you rather straining to make out a case? We have heard of
travellers who had a very different experience."

"At New York, yes, where we are infected with the foreign singleness
more than at Boston. Perhaps a still livelier illustration of our
ironical temperament was given me once before when I brought some things
into Boston. There were some Swiss pewters, which the officers joined me
for a moment in trying to make out were more than two hundred years old;
but failing, jocosely levied thirty per cent. ad valorem on them; and
then in the same gay spirit taxed me twenty per cent. on a medallion of
myself done by an American scul