A Smuggler's Story.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 237, 14 January 1888, Page 8

A Smuggler' s Story.

•A. certain Englishmaii *eiifc by ifhip to "France abput the beginning joi this century. Pc was very- stout and paralytic,' and' when he came on b t oard glared morosely— as paralytic gentlemen sometimes will—at theofficials who addressed him. As, for answering them, he never dreamed of doing such a thing. The idea never entered his head ; and the two liveried footmen', both Frenchmen, who supported him, had to explain as . bost they could the stolid silence of their master. " C'estun Anglais -v'oila tout" — "Heis an Englishman— that is all "- they whispered to tne astonished captain. The ship was no sooner in motion than his servants hurried him off to his private cabin, and arranged him so thab he could go to sleep. The winds blew, the waves dashed over the ship, the footmen were horribly M, but the paralytic gentleman lay in his berth like an infant slumbering in its cradle. It was observed by the sailor* that his cabin reeked of tobacco, and the presumption was that while the hurricane was at its height he had been aroused, and had indulged iv a good smoke. At last port was reached, and the footmen, finding their master still stretched out at full length, had to raise him up unceremoniously and remove him from tho ship. Stilt the same silence and the same forbidding glare. Was it afoybodeing off the horrible fate that now 'awaited him ? After his bags had been examined at the Custom House, the two treacherous menials hurried the fat and paraly tic Englishman to/ an hotel,, took off all his clothes, anel then proceeded to cut off his face and hand* .1 But such waa the pblegm of this paralytic man that he neither spoke nor uttered aery/ nor did owe muscle so> much as tmiver. This, perhaps',, was not so strange as migKfc at' first a-ppear when it is, explained thiafc the corpulent cripple was in the hands r not of two footmen,, but of two smugglers disguised as suclr, and that he consisted -with the exception of his hands and face,' which' were wax — entirely of tobacco, which in tho garb of a human being was thus introduced free of duty into the sunny land of Franco.