“‘I’d see him sent to Congress first!’ says I.
“‘Very well,’ says the lawyer. ‘Then perhaps we could classify him as machinery or parts thereof. But you wouldn’t save much in that way. You’d have to pay forty per cent ad valorem, and very likely the appraisers would say that you had undervalued the man, and would value him at double what your contract seems to say he is worth. They’re bound to protect American machinery against the pauper labor of Europe every time.’
“‘How would it do to classify him as old family plate?’ said I.
“‘Worse and worse,’ said the lawyer. ‘He’d have to pay sixty per cent, and you’d have a good deal of difficulty in proving that he is old family plate. Of course it could be done, but it would probably cost you more than the whole amount of the duty. They’re a perfectly honest set of men, the appraisers, and they naturally come high.’
“‘What will I do, then?’ said I; ‘let him die in the custom-house and then sue for damages?’
“‘There might be something worth while done in that way,’ says the lawyer, ‘but it would be middling hard on the man. But I’ll tell you what we can do. Didn’t you say that the man was singing in a church choir when you hired him?’
“‘I did so,’ says I.
“‘All right,’ says the lawyer. ‘We’ll classify him as an “article used in the service of religion,” and get him in free of any duty whatever. You go and get him an engagement in a church without an hour’s delay, and then come to me. We’ll beat the custom-house this time, sure enough.’
“I got the man an engagement to sing for a week in a Methodist meeting-house, and before the week was out he was decided to be an article used in the service of religion, and was returned to me free of duty, and cursing the head off of every officer in the revenue service. The end of it was that my tenor claimed that I had broken my contract by setting him to sing in a church, and he sued me for damages, and got them too. So you see, my young friend, that a man may have trouble with the custom-house who does not want to defraud the Government out of anything, not even the duty on that sealskin sack that I hear you have taken apart and packed in a spare pair of boots.”
THE END.