The North-Eastern Weekly Gazette. — 1883-06-09 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

THE CURIOUS TRICKS OF  FRENCH SMUGGLERS.  At one of the Paris barriers there exists * museum of contrivances used for the smuggling of liquors into the city which have been captured on various occasions by the employes of this octroi. Here are piles of common al. ite plates, the top one of which, on being lifted off, shows a cylinder of tin piercing the remainder of the pile. Here are rolls of linen, which are merely a few yards of stuff wrapped around a tin box fashioned to the requisite shape, and with ends artistically finished off with stripes of linen set on end. Here is the bast of india-rubber of a make-believe wetnurse, who used to take her little charge out daily to breathe the fresh air beyond the barriers. Here are two great blocks of stone that on closer inspection prove to be tin-lined boxes with artistically-fitting ends. Here are three stout folio volumes bound in calf and labelled" The Philosophy of Nations." With these books under his arm a pale, interesting-looking young student used to wander forth into the suburbs to pursue his studies. One day an inquisitive Custom House officer, grown suspicious from the fact that the youth always carried out the same books to study, insisted on opening one of these volumes. He found that the leaves had been nicely cut away with a sharp knife to afford a secret niche tor a square case-bottle. which was filled with brandy—a similar contrivance exisiting in each of the other two book.. But the cleverest trick of all was one which was very complicated and costly in its details, but which must have paid handsomely, as it was carried on for months without detection. A lady and gentleman, seated in a plain, respectable-looking coupe, drawn by a good horse, and driven by a coachman in livery, were wont to drive out to the Bois de Bonlogne every afternoon, returning usually about dusk. The gentleman was evidently an invalid. He was always en. veloped in a fur-lined cloak with the collar raised around his throat, and had a fur cap pulled down over his brows, while the little that could be seen of his countenance was of a sickly pallor. He was always reclining in a corner of the carriage, as if too feeble to sit erect, while his attentive wife sat beside him, evidently solicitous for his welfare, being especially careto keep his cloak well wrapped around him. The guardians of the octroi saw his vehicle and its inmates pass by them without suspicion. One day, however, after making the usual en. quiry, "Have you anything to disclose ?" the Custom House officer, on closing the door, struck the supposed invalid's foot. "I beg your pardon, sir," said the officer. No response—not so muck as an inclination of the head. Rather surprised, the officer repeated his remark in a louder tone, at the same time touching the sick man't shoulder. At that moment the lady and coach. man leaped from their respective places and fled away with surprising swiftness, leaving in the hands of the officers the horses, the carriage. and the invalid, which last was found to be made of tin and filled with brandy—his face being most artistically constructed in wax. The space under the seat of the coupe and the coachman's box were also reservoirs of tin, so that the smuggling transaction of the party had been practiced on a very extensive scale.  THE costly work—to the unhappy country—of compensating those who have suffered from outrages in Ireland, goes on. In the Dublit' Gazette awards to the amount of nearly £.5,000 are announced, including £4OO to the personal representatives of Mr Arthur E. Herbert, J.P., murdered in March, 1882; £7OO to the familj of John Lydon, who was mnrdered with biU son in 1881; and £1,500 to George Carter, J.P shot at and wounded in Mayo in March, 1882.  I  A