Читать книгу In an Unknown Prison Land. An account of convicts and colonists in New Caledonia with jottings out and home онлайн

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They didn’t scatter precious, if unmentionable, garments around the shed floor out of pure devilry or levity of soul. The American official is like any other; he wants to earn his salary as easily as possible, and the new tariff regulations gave him a tremendous lot of work, so he took counsel with himself and came to the astute conclusion that if he systematically outraged the tenderest sentiments of the wives and daughters of millionaires, senators, congressmen, political bosses, and other American sovereigns for a certain period either the regulations would have to be considerably watered down or there would be another civil war.

His conclusions were perfectly correct. The big customs officials faced the music stubbornly for a time; then invitations to dinner and the most select social functions began to fall off. Their wives and daughters lost many opportunities of showing off the pretty frocks which they had smuggled in from Europe.

Election time came near—in other words, Judgment Day for every American official from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It was openly hinted in high places that the authors of such outrages on America’s proudest matrons and most dainty maidens were soulless brutes who weren’t fit to hold office, and then the United States Customs Department came down on its knees, kissed the hems of the garments it had scattered around the shed floor, and, as usual, the Eternal Feminine had conquered.