I then saw the strangest of sights. In the middle of the stage were my forty-two trunks. In obedience to a sign, twenty of the men came forward, and placing themselves each one between two trunks, with a quick movement with their right and left hands they took the covers off the trunks on the right and left of them. Jarrett, with frowns and an unpleasant grin, held out my keys to them. He had asked me that morning for my keys for the Customs. “Oh, it’s nothing,” he said; “don’t be uneasy,” and the way in which my luggage had always been respected in other countries had given me perfect confidence about it. The principal personage of the ugly group came towards me, accompanied by Abbey, and Jarrett explained things to me. The man was an official from the American Custom-house. The Custom-house is an abominable institution in every country, but worse in America than anywhere else. I was prepared for all this, and was most affable to the tormentor of a traveller’s patience. He raised the melon which served him for a hat, and without taking his cigar out of his mouth made some incomprehensible remark to me. He then turned to his regiment of men, made an abrupt sign with his hand, and uttered some word of command, whereupon the forty dirty hands of these twenty men proceeded to forage among my velvets, satins, and laces. I rushed forward to save my poor dresses from such outrageous violation, and I ordered the lady of our company who had charge of the costumes to lift my gowns out one at a time, which she accordingly did, aided by my maid, who was in tears at the small amount of respect shown by these boors to all my beautiful, fragile things. Two ladies had just arrived, very noisy and businesslike. One of them was short and stout: her nose seemed to begin at the roots of her hair; she had round, placid-looking eyes, and a mouth like a snout; her arms she was hiding timidly behind her heavy flabby bust, and her ungainly knees seemed to come straight out of her groin. She looked like a seated cow. Her companion was like a terrapin, with her little black evil-looking head at the end of a neck which was too long and very stringy. She kept shooting it out of her boa and drawing it back with the most incredible rapidity. The rest of her body bulged out flat. These two delightful persons were the dressmakers sent for by the Custom-house to value my costumes. They glanced at me in a furtive way, and gave a little bow full of bitterness and jealous rage at the sight of my dresses; and I was quite aware that two more enemies had now come upon the scene. These two odious shrews began to chatter and argue, pawing and crumpling my dresses and cloaks at the same time. They kept exclaiming in the most emphatic way, “Oh, how beautiful! What magnificence! What luxury! All our customers will want gowns like these, and we shall never be able to make them! It will be the ruin of all the American dressmakers.” They were working up the judges into a state of