Told by the Colonel by William Livingston Alden - HTML preview

SILVER-PLATED.

The Etruria was nearing New York, and the prospect of the inevitable interview with the custom-house officers had already cast a gloom over the passengers. For the most part they were silent, and their faces wore an anxious and solemn expression. The Rev. Mr. Waterman, of the Eighth Day Baptist Church, who had bought largely of ready-made clothing in London, even suggested that it might be well to hold a prayer-meeting in the saloon.

A group of half a dozen men were sitting in the lee of one of the deck-houses, smoking silently, when one of the number, a young and sanguine person, suddenly exclaimed:

“I don’t believe any honest man ever has any trouble with the custom-house. It’s the fellows who want to defraud the Government who make all the complaints.”

“What you say may be patriotism and it may be ignorance——”

“What’s the difference?” murmured a cynical interrupter.

“But,” continued the speaker, “it isn’t true. I never tried to defraud the Government, but for all that I’ve had more trouble with the custom-house than if I’d been an honest collector of the port trying not to mix up politics with the business of the office.”

“America expects every man to pay his duty, Colonel,” replied the sanguine young man, with a vague reminiscence of Nelson. “Tell us about your trouble, and I rather think you’ll have to admit that it was because you didn’t want to pay duty on something.”

The Colonel was generally understood by the rest of the passengers to be a sort of theatrical manager, a position which in the United States entitles a man to the relative rank of colonel in the militia and commodore in the canal-boat service. He had on several occasions shown a knowledge of music and of professional musicians which had won for him some respect among those of his fellow-passengers who did not know the difference between a hurdy-gurdy and a hautboy, and were therefore fond of posing as musical critics. He was a shrewd, good-tempered colonel, and the barkeeper said that he was the most elegant, high-toned gentleman he had ever crossed with.

“Electricity, gentlemen,” resumed the Colonel, “is the biggest thing of the century, but it has its drawbacks. Did any of you ever happen to ride on that electric railroad in Berlin? Well, I have, and ’most anybody who goes to Berlin is liable to ride on it. It taught me, however, that a man ought to be pretty careful when he trusts himself in an electric car.

“It happened in this way. I was an agent in the general show business, and was collecting an opera company for a friend of mine who was going to open in Chicago. I had come across a first-class tenor—found him in a country church choir in Germany—and was bringing him home with me under a contract, when he and I took that ride on that Berlin electric road. He was a careless sort of chap, and he sat down in a corner of the car where the electricity had been leaking and the seat was pretty wet.”

“I never knew before,” remarked the young man, “that electricity could make a seat wet.”

“Probably not,” retorted the Colonel. “I should judge that there might be a right smart lot of things that you mightn’t know. Most of these gentlemen here, however, have probably heard that nowadays electricity is put up for use in bottles and metallic cans. It stands to reason that anything capable of being put into a bottle is capable of leaking, and wetting whatever it leaks on. If there is anybody here who knows more about bottles than I do, I’m ready to let him tell this story.

“As I was saying, my man sat down in a sort of pool of electric fluid, and sat there for about half an hour. He was wearing in the fob-pocket of his trousers a cheap silver watch. I had given it to him so that he might get some exercise and prevent himself from getting too fat. He never suspected my motive, but he tired himself all out winding it up for two hours every night. Now you may not believe it, but I give you my word that the electricity completely dissolved that watch-case and deposited the silver around the man’s waist. He didn’t find it out till night, and you never saw a man so scared as when he found that there was a band about four inches wide silver-plated all round his waist. The doctor told him that the only possible way of getting it off would be to dissolve it with acid, but that the acid would eat clean through to his spine and injure his voice. So my tenor had to let bad enough alone, and be satisfied with another ten-and-sixpenny gymnasium that I gave him to mollify his feelings.

“We came over on the Arizona, and it got around during the passage that my man was silver-plated. There was a custom-house spy on board, and it happened that after the tenor had sworn that he had nothing dutiable with him, the inspector ordered him to strip and be personally examined. Of course when this was done it was discovered that he was silver-plated, and he was held for duty under the general heading in the tariff of ‘all other articles, silver-plated, or in whole, and not elsewhere enumerated,’ and taxed fifty per cent ad valorem and fined two hundred and fifty dollars for failing to declare that he was plated. He couldn’t pay and I wouldn’t pay, and so he was locked up in a bonded warehouse, and I went to consult my lawyer.

“I laid all the facts before him, and told him I would pay him handsomely if he could get my man out of the custom-house without paying either duty or fine. Now, the lawyer knew the tariff from beginning to end, and if any man could help me I knew he could. He didn’t promise anything at first, but he discussed the question by and large and in all its bearings.

“‘I’m afraid,’ said he, ‘that there is no hope of getting your friend out without paying duty, but we may succeed in having him classified so as to make the duty very low. For instance, you say the man is a professional singer. Now, we might have him classed as a musical instrument and taxed forty-five per cent ad valorem. By the bye, what did you agree to pay him?’

“‘I agreed to pay him,’ says I, ‘a hundred dollars per week.’

“‘That’s bad,’ says the lawyer. ‘A hundred dollars a week is fifty-two hundred per year, which is about the interest at six per cent on eighty-seven thousand dollars. You wouldn’t like to pay forty-three or four thousand dollars duty on him.’

“‘I’d see him sent to Congress first!’ says I.

“‘Very well,’ says the lawyer. ‘Then perhaps we could classify him as machinery or parts thereof. But you wouldn’t save much in that way. You’d have to pay forty per cent ad valorem, and very likely the appraisers would say that you had undervalued the man, and would value him at double what your contract seems to say he is worth. They’re bound to protect American machinery against the pauper labor of Europe every time.’

“‘How would it do to classify him as old family plate?’ said I.

“‘Worse and worse,’ said the lawyer. ‘He’d have to pay sixty per cent, and you’d have a good deal of difficulty in proving that he is old family plate. Of course it could be done, but it would probably cost you more than the whole amount of the duty. They’re a perfectly honest set of men, the appraisers, and they naturally come high.’

“‘What will I do, then?’ said I; ‘let him die in the custom-house and then sue for damages?’

“‘There might be something worth while done in that way,’ says the lawyer, ‘but it would be middling hard on the man. But I’ll tell you what we can do. Didn’t you say that the man was singing in a church choir when you hired him?’

“‘I did so,’ says I.

“‘All right,’ says the lawyer. ‘We’ll classify him as an “article used in the service of religion,” and get him in free of any duty whatever. You go and get him an engagement in a church without an hour’s delay, and then come to me. We’ll beat the custom-house this time, sure enough.’

“I got the man an engagement to sing for a week in a Methodist meeting-house, and before the week was out he was decided to be an article used in the service of religion, and was returned to me free of duty, and cursing the head off of every officer in the revenue service. The end of it was that my tenor claimed that I had broken my contract by setting him to sing in a church, and he sued me for damages, and got them too. So you see, my young friend, that a man may have trouble with the custom-house who does not want to defraud the Government out of anything, not even the duty on that sealskin sack that I hear you have taken apart and packed in a spare pair of boots.”

THE END.