this artifice no longer deceives the officers, who have discovered it again and again, so that it is really safer to leave the log solid and uninteresting.
A variation on the log trick was invented by a stoker, who hollowed out a long cavity from the end of a beam and slid into it a tin drawer, the end of which was faced with wood corresponding in grain to the beam. Unavailing all, however, for the stoker and his tin box and his "hard cake" made a simultaneous appearance at the police-court.
Jack has always been a musical person, and among the many instruments which he affects the concertina and the accordion occupy honoured places. There are many persons whose ears are not attuned to appreciate any superiority of either of these instruments over the other, and, indeed, whose sole preference would be for the abolition of both. Jack, however, usually prefers the accordion—because it holds more cigars. It is not long since a guileless son of Neptune had to bid a long farewell not a mere to his accordion—an unusually large one—in consequence of its being found to enclose 300 and odd cigars and two pounds of cake tobacco. These things did not improve the tone, but they made the instrument much more valuable.
There has been a sad falling off in the consumption of snuff of late years, and the article is really scarcely worth smuggling. Still a seizure is made now and again, but never a very large one. When the sale was larger, conscientious merchants were wont to import snuff compressed to the shape and general appearance of oil-cakes, such as are used to feed cattle. These cakes of snuff were mixed with genuine oil-cakes, and the only way in which to distinguish them was by smell. A Custom-house officer's nose is a most useful professional implement.
"A Custom-house officer's nose.""The accordian."
Not unlike the hollow log device in idea, but perhaps superior as an artistic conception, was the coal stratagem. A large lump of coal would be chosen—a lump with a smooth, straight grain which splits easily. A nice flat slice would be chopped off this, and then, on the surface thus exposed, the persevering mineralogist would make laborious excavations till the lump of coal became a hollow shell; and, as it would have been rather a pity to have this careful piece of work crushed in by accident from the outside, the interior was suitably supported by a tight and hard packing of the proper kind of tobacco, or sometimes even with snuff. Then, when the slice first removed had been carefully replaced over the hole and neatly fastened down with pitch, that piece of coal became an object of loving solicitude to its proprietor. And very proper, too; for, just as the Venus of Milo is not a mere lump of stone, so this was no longer a mere dull piece of coal—it had been invested with artistic merit, and some pounds of superior plug. We regret to say that this triumph of art met with early destruction at the hands of a clumsy Philistine with a crow-bar—a customs man. Wherefore the coal-box strata-
