In addition
to a raft of ordinary baggage, we had six or eight trunks which were
filled exclusively with dutiable stuff--household goods purchased in
Frankfort for use in Florence, where we had taken a house. I was going
to ship these through by express; but at the last moment an order went
throughout Germany forbidding the moving of any parcels by train unless
the owner went with them. This was a bad outlook. We must take these
things along, and the delay sure to be caused by the examination of them
in the custom-house might lose us our train. I imagined all sorts of
terrors, and enlarged them steadily as we approached the Italian
frontier. We were six in number, clogged with all that baggage, and I
was courier for the party the most incapable one they ever employed.
We arrived, and pressed with the crowd into the immense custom-house, and
the usual worries began; everybody crowding to the counter and begging to
have his baggage examined first, and all hands clattering and chattering
at once. It seemed to me that I could do nothing; it would be better to
give it all up and go away and leave the baggage.
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