ptor, who had forgotten to verify an
invoice of it before the American consul at the port of shipment."

"It seems to us," we suggested, "that this was a piece of dead earnest."

"The fact was earnest," our friend maintained, "but the spirit in which
it was realized was that of a brotherly persuasion that I would see the
affair in its true light, as a joke that was on me. It was a joke that
cost me thirty dollars."

"Still, we fail to see the irony of the transaction."

"Possibly," our friend said, after a moment's muse, "I am letting my
sense of another incident color the general event too widely. But before
I come to that I wish to allege some proofs of the national irony which
I received on two occasions when landing in New York. On the first of
these occasions the commissioner who came aboard the steamer, to take
the sworn declaration of the passengers that they were not smugglers,
recognized my name as that of a well-known financier who had been abroad
for a much-needed rest, and personally welcomed me home in such terms
that I felt sure of complete exemption from the duties levied on others.
When we landed I found that this good friend had looked out for me to
the extent of getting me the first inspector, and he had guarded my
integrity to the extent of committing me to a statement in severalty of
the things my family had bought abroad, so that I had to pay
twenty-eight dollars on my daughter's excess of the hundred dollars
allowed free, although my wife was bringing in only seventy-five
dollars' value, and I less than fifty."

"You mean that you had meant to lump the imports and escape the tax
altogether?" we asked.

"Something like that."

"And the officer's idea of caressing irony was to let you think you
could escape equally well by being perfectly candid?"

"Something like that."

"And what was the other occasion?"

"Oh, it was when I had a letter to the customs officer, and he said it
would be all right, and then furnished me an inspector who opened every
piece of my baggage just as if I had been one of the wicked."

We could not help laughing, and our friend grinned appreciatively. "And
what was that supreme instance of caressing irony which you experienced
in Boston?" we pursued.

"Ah, _there_ is something I don't think you can question. But I didn't
experience it; I merely observed it. We were coming down the stairs to
take our hack at the foot of the pier, and an elderly lady who was
comin