was much quieter and less troublesome than the ordinary kind, and worth more money—lace being dutiable at that time, as well as tobacco. Still there is reason to believe that the lady afterwards gave up that class of baby.
"The Calais-Dover baby."
Clocks and watches are not dutiable under English customs laws, but they are so in France. This is what led to the sad disaster to a French lady who had bought a charming drawing-room clock in Switzerland, and essayed to cross the frontier with her bargain worn as a dress-improver. It was a capital idea, and would have succeeded admirably were it not that, while the lady was assuring the douanier that there was nothing dutiable about her, the virtuous clock solemnly struck twelve.
Watches were once dutiable in England, however, and a very highly approved way of smuggling them was in a book. The book was opened, and a good bunch of the middle pages punched through with circular holes, just large enough to admit the watches. Then, the punctured leaves having been glued together and the watches inserted in the holes, two or three whole leaves on either side next the glued ones were pasted down to conceal the contraband articles, and the leaves still remaining loose at either end of the book were still available for mental improvement. He must have been a very rude Custom-house officer who first insisted on taking away a lady's or gentleman's book in the middle of her or his perusal, and finding watches in it. But he did it, nevertheless, and, doubtless, never felt the least sorrow for his want of courtesy.
"Watches."
The bread manœuvre is worth mentioning. You make up your 'baccy or cigars into a firm paper parcel, and, having plastered it round with dough in the correct shape of a half-quartern loaf, you bake it, and there you are. When the revenue men can penetrate even this disguise—and they have done it—what hope is there for a poor smuggler? The French understand this plan, and if any English boy at a French school has cakes sent from home, they always arrive cut into wedges by the douanier, and sad are the misgivings in that school that the douanier may have poached a wedge for himself.
Sixty years ago or more, when the country was ravaged by small-pox, many
