Chapter XXVII: The Custom-House

"Mr. Siegel," I said, when tea was finished and we had lighted his cigars, "I thought you were 'German.'"

"You did, hey? Well, I'm German the same way you are English! My grandfather was a _real_ German, but they ran him out in '48, and he went over with Schurz and the rest of that band, and if you can find better Americans than their descendants, I do not know where they are. The German of to-day is another creature, and I want nothing to do with him. Those people are the limit; '_verboten_' this and '_verboten_' that, till a man doesn't dare do anything without asking the policeman if he may. Women have to stand in the gutter till an officer goes by. Why, when we were in Berlin one of them would have run Maria through with his sword if I hadn't told him I was a friend of the Kaiser."

"Jim," exclaimed Mrs. Siegel, "how you do talk! You know he never touched me, and you never spoke to the Kaiser!"

"Well, _he_ didn't know it! And moreover, as I am a friend of Carnegie--now that he has gone out of business--and had on a good suit of clothes, and so looked as if I could lend money to his boss, he believed it was true, and so let you live. Oh, I can manage the army all right, it is the custom-house officer who 'gets my goat.' I understand how to deal with the American breed, but I am helpless with those fellows. However, I have got things fixed now, so that if we ever have to go back there, it will not be as bad as it was at Frankfort."

"What happened at Frankfort?" I asked.

"Well, I'll tell you. My doctor at home wanted to go to Canada for the fishing, and fearing a competitor would get his business away from him, told me to go to Carlsbad and get a good soak. When I had finished with the prune pure, the veal and the water, I started for Frankfort to meet Maria, who had been at St. Moritz. She had the usual twenty-one trunks, and I asked for the keys and began to open them--getting one key in five right, accusing the French maid of having lost some of them, and getting the usual French change in reply.

"Well, sir, if a man is looking for a sweat he has no need to go to Carlsbad, let him try to open his wife's trunks while a German pig in uniform looks on! When you tell him you can't find one key, but it is the one for the soiled-clothes bag, and he says that is the one he most wants to see, you are 'up against it.'

"I should have had a fit in a few minutes, I believe, if I had not caught sight of Charlie Wilson at the other end of the shed, trying to get his wife's trunks open. But he was not showing the same patience and dignity as I was. His language was something awful. He first told the maid he had given her the key to the hat-box, and she said he hadn't. Then he said he had given it to his wife, and _she_ said he hadn't, so I knew he must be badly rattled. When a man begins to change his lies it's a sure sign he has lost his nerve. Mrs. Wilson began to cry, and _her_ pig laughed. So just to cheer them up a bit I called out: 'Hello, Charlie, I thought you were down at your place on Long Island.' Then I thought _Charlie_ was going to cry! He wiped the sweat off his face and, coming over to me, said:

"Jim, this is something fierce! I have a perfectly good home where we can have chowder three times a day, if we want it, and a swim in the surf every evening, and things to drink that are not made out of hair-oil, and I left it all and came over here because that ---- doctor told me to go to Homberg!'

"Well, we finally got all the trunks open, and as they found nothing they could fine me for, we were allowed to drive to the hotel. Mrs. Wilson was still dabbling her eyes with a bit of lace that one tear would have made a sop, and Maria said she was worn out, and was going to bed, and Charlie said he must have a drink, and so I told his wife I would go with him, and see that he did not take two!

"When this had been done I went to my room, took off my coat and collar, and sat down to wrestle with the problem of trunks. After a while it came to me, and I rang for the porter. He came, in his field-marshal's uniform, and said, 'Bitter?' and I said, 'Very bitter,' and then asked him if he could speak the English language? He said he could speak all languages. I guess that was right, but it would have been better if he had spoken one at a time! However, he finally got it into his head that I wanted a locksmith, and said he thought he could get one that evening or the next morning.

"I said: 'My friend, you listen to me: every minute you delay takes off a mark from what is coming to you when I leave, so you can calculate how much will be owing me if you don't get a move on.'

"Well, that got under his skin, and before long he returned with a man in a green apron, who, he said, was a locksmith.

"I explained to the porter that I wanted the locks taken off every trunk, and twenty-one new locks put on, which one key would fit. It took him some time to understand that I did not want twenty-one keys and one lock, but when he did, he translated it into one of his five branches of languages. The man in the green apron began to run around in circles and said there were not twenty-one locks alike in Frankfort. I asked where they could be gotten, and Green Apron said only at the factory.

"Well, where was that?

"In Munich or near there. If he wrote he might be able to get them in a week.

"I asked if his health did not permit him to travel.

"When he got that, he was instructed to take the first train to Munich and get those locks, bring them back and have them on the trunks by noon the next day. It was Maria's birthday, and I wanted to give her a surprise.

"Well, sir, it was done, and now life is easy. The only drawback was that there were no more German custom-houses for us to pass through, and so no more officers who wanted to see how many pieces we had in the wash, for we shipped our baggage 'in bond' and when we reached England the officer said: 'If you will open that one, it will be all that I shall require,' and when I offered him what would be expected at home, he declined it! However, I shall have some fun at home when we get on the dock where the officers loaf while distracted passengers hunt for keys.

"The porter got his tip, but whether it was not as much as he had expected, or whether he thought I had not shown proper respect for the field-marshal's uniform, or for some other reason, he did not seem grateful and said something about tags. I told him I didn't need any, as I had had mine printed before we left home.

"Maria says that I did not understand, that the Germans are expecting a sort of Day of Judgment, and that Tag means Day. Well, if it comes while I'm still here, I'm willing to take what's coming to me if sentence can be suspended till I see some of those army and custom-house officers get theirs. I worked in the rolling-mills, when I was young, and I guess I can stand it better than some!"

"Jim," said Mrs. Siegel, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself, talking that way before Mr. Dobson."

"I guess that's right, mother, but Dobson dresses and talks and acts so like a man that I keep forgetting that he is a preacher."

As we drove away toward Windsor I said to Ruth: "Is he not typical of hundreds we know, and, in spite of their roughness, what a power they are in the land!"

But Ruth had not found him so amusing as I did. She said that she found that continuous exaggeration, which is supposed to be the essence of American humor, rather tiring, and added:

"I do not deny his good spirit and kindliness, but underneath there seems to be a kind of hardness in men of his sort that frightens me. Your neighbor of this afternoon who rebuked you, was unquestionably lacking in a sense of humor--or at any rate in the kind we are used to--but he was a finer type than this man, and I cannot help feeling that the man who has an awful sense of truth is a greater national asset than the man we have just left."

When Ruth takes that tone I do not dare to answer, but I may say to you that I do not think she does these men justice. If "Der Tag" ever comes--and in my opinion it will not come--I think all this talk is just _fluff_--still, if it should come, I believe these reckless talkers, but shrewd--well, perhaps also hard--men will give to the nation all the shrewdness and all the energy which went into the upbuilding of their business, and yet will keep on laughing at the world, and at themselves, too, all the time!