I found my four pieces--two containers of clothes and such, a typewriter, and the ungainly toy--and had them hoisted on to the inspection counter. The most curious man I ever knew went at them. The typewriter came first. “What is this?” he asked when he had opened the case. “A typewriter.” “Where did you buy it?” “In Chicago.” “What do you use it for?” “For typewriting.” “Typewriting what?” “Stuff for newspapers and magazines.” “Pretty handy, isn’t it?” “Very.” “Have you written any articles over here?” “Yes.” “Where are they?” “Some are in America by this time; others are in the censors’ hands.” He wanted to know what publications I was connected with, and I told him. He allowed me to close up the typewriter case, and next launched an offensive against a young trunk. He examined my collars one by one and found them all the same size. He came upon a package containing five or six hundred sheets of blank copy paper. He inspected every sheet, holding many of them up to the light. He gave individual attention to each of the few bits of lingerie the Parisians had not considered worth keeping. He exhibited an amazing interest in my other suit. He fondled a beautiful gray sweater for fully five minutes. He went through a copy of the _Chu Chin Chow_ score, page by page. I wondered he didn’t sing it. Holding out only the blank paper, he repacked, and tackled the suit-case. He counted the bristles in the tooth-brush. He found two French dictionaries and a French grammar and studied them for approximately one semester. He opened a nest of shirts and handkerchiefs and spread them out for a thorough review. I should hate to be a clerk in a gents’ furnishing store and have him wished on me as a customer. In the lower southeast corner he discovered an unopened box of shaving cream. As every one knows, this commodity comes in a tube, which is wrapped in transparent paper, and the tube, thus wrapped, is contained in a pasteboard box for protection or something. Old Curiosity opened the box and extracted the tube. He gazed at it through the wrapper, then removed the wrapper and stared at the nude tube. “Where is this made?” he asked. “In America. It comes out like a ribbon and lies flat on the brush.” Without comment, he reclothed the tube as well as he could in its mutilated wrapper, put it back in its box, and repacked the suit-case and shut it. “Is that all you have?” he inquired. “No,” I said. “There’s that big square package containing a toy.” Now about this toy. It’s a complete but ridiculously impractical system of trenches. French soldiers of leaden composition are resisting a boche attack. Some are supposed to be throwing bombs. Others are fighting with bayonets. A few are busy with the trench guns. There are threads to represent barbed-wire entanglements and a few Huns enmeshed in them. Other Huns are prone, the victims of the sturdy poilu defense.