WENT OUT FOR DESSERT.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 432, 20 January 1912, Page 7

WENT OUT FOR DESSERT.

On the border line of France and Belgium, not very far from Dinant la Jolie, is a gentleman's house. The house is in France, the garden is m Belgium. French Customs duties have been enforced with great severity of late, and when it became known in the village that M. X. was going to give a dinner party in honour of the birth of a son, the Custom House officials watched the house to see that nothing was brought in from Belgium without paying duty. The only thing ordered from the Belgium side of the frontier was the dessert. As he was ordering it the pastry-cook told M. X. that he would probably have to pay duty on it. "We shall see," said the happy father, and gave orders for the dessert to be sent him punctually at half-past nine. When it came, the man who brought it was told to wait in toe Belgian half of the garden, where a table had been put, and M. X. and his guests went out and ate their Belgian cakes and fruit in Belgium, because, as M. X. laughingly explained to the Custom House officials on the far side of the hedge, though they might charge him duty upon cakes and Fruit which were brought into France, they had no right to do so when they were brought across the frontier "after consumption." —Paris Letter.