"Well, I guess they have. But how is it that you, an official of the government, seem to ignore the law of your own country? Don't you know that if all these articles are for my own private use, they are not dutiable, whether new or not?" The man did not answer. He took out more linen, which he put on the floor, and spreading open a pair of unmentionables, he asked again: "Have you worn this? It looks quite new." I nodded affirmatively. He then took out a pair of socks. "Have you worn these?" "I don't know," I said. "Have a sniff at them." He continued his examination, and was about to throw my evening suit on the floor. I had up to now been _almost_ amused at the proceedings, but I felt my good-humor was going, and the lion began to wag its tail. I took the man by the arm, and looking at him sternly, I said: "Now, you put this carefully on the top of some other clothes." He looked at me and complied. By this time all the contents of my large trunk were spread on the floor. He got up on his feet and said: "Have I looked everywhere?" "No," I said, "you haven't. Do you know how the famous Regent diamond, worn by the last kings of France on their crowns, was smuggled into French territory?" [Illustration: THE CONTENTS.] The creature looked at me with an air of impudence. "No, I don't," he replied. I explained to him, and added: "You have not looked _there_." The lion, that lies dormant at the bottom of the quietest man, was fairly roused in me, and on the least provocation, I would have given this man a first-class hiding. He went away, wondering whether I had insulted him or not, and left me in the van to repack my trunk as best I could, an operation which, I understand, it was his duty to perform himself. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXIII. CHICAGO (FIRST VISIT)--THE "NEIGHBORHOOD" OF CHICAGO--THE HISTORY OF CHICAGO--PUBLIC SERVANTS--A VERY DEAF MAN. _Chicago, February 17._ Oh! a lecturing tour in America! I am here on my way to St. Paul and Minneapolis. Just before leaving New York, I saw in a comic paper that Bismarck must really now be considered as a great man, because, since his departure from office, there had been no rumor of his having applied to Major Pond to get up a lecturing tour for him in the United States. It was not news to me that there are plenty of people in America who laugh at the European author's trick of going to the American platform as soon as he has made a little name for himself in his own country. The laugh finds an echo in England, especially from some journalists who have never been asked to go, and from a few men who, having done one tour, think it wise not to repeat the experience. For my part, when I consider that Emerson, Holmes, Mark Twain, have been lecturers, that Dickens, Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, Sala, Stanley, Archdeacon Farrar, and many more, all have made their bow to American audiences, I fail to discover anything very derogatory in the proceeding.