it?" you return, as if you hoped it was.

"A bit fresher, perhaps, sir," he corrects. "She did put 'er foot in a few 'oles lahst night. See the land, sir?"

Ah, that's why you're so gay!

"Land! Where?"

You leap from your berth to the port-hole in one bound.

A schooner and a coastwise steamer are in sight, gulls are swinging in long circles with the ship, and far away on the horizon lies a haze which is America.

You dress with care and hurry to the deck. You bow and give a gay "good morning!" to some people you've not spoken to before. You even have a word for the man who always walks with a pedometer, and the one who is coming back from Germany after having put a noiseless soup-spoon on the market. The deck is all abloom with pretty girls in pretty hats and pretty suits.

Even the ship is making ready for the shore. Hatches are off, busy donkey-engines are hustling mail-bags up from dark recesses within, stewards are smiling as they rush about with trunks and rolls of rugs.

"I'm Boots, sir. Don't forget Boots, sir."

Ah, no, good Boots! Thrice welcome, Boots! And here's thy toll, already set aside, like all the other tips, in envelopes.

Land ho!

The world is blithe and gay—except for one depressing thought. The nearer you get to the New York custom-house, the heavier becomes the load of luggage on your mind. Dresses, hats, wraps, lingerie, so gaily bought in Paris, lie withering like Dead Sea fruit in the forlorn cold storage of furiously labelled wardrobe trunks.

"Must I declare that Paris motor-coat? It never fitted, and it's fairly worn to shreds!"

"Yes, dear, everything. And sh-h! There are spotters on the ships, you know."

The United States custom-house spotter ought to look like a detective, but he doesn't. Instead of playing Foxy Quiller, he plays bridge, and probably with you. He adores the ladies—the dear ladies, God bless 'em! For it is the ladies whom the spotter mostly spots: the pretty ladies with big state-rooms and big trunks and big hats; the pretty ladies with the little maids and little evening gowns and little pearls. The spotter has to be the sort of man these ladies like, or else the Government will change his spots. In short, he is a perfect dear! So when, at bridge, he makes the coy confession that he is taking French silk stockings over to his sister and wonders if he'll "have trouble on the pier," your wife tells him just what she is doing. ("One can't mistake a gentleman!") She tells him that she's going into her state-room to sew some New York labels into Paris gowns and hats—and that is how she comes to lose twelve dresses and a twenty-thousand-dollar necklace, and have hysterics on the dock, and how she never sends that dinner invitation to him at the club in Forty-fourth Street.