You will remember that the day I was at Simplex I took some sketches. Well, I bundled these up along with some really exquisite water-colours that I purchased at an art-shop, and I sent them to Ireland.

Yes, I bought these pictures without pain. The vendor of these objects of art spoke perfect English; it was a delight to hear him. So pleased was I with my purchases, that I hastened home, there and then, and adding my own artistic treasures, made a little square package of it all for my aunt Rebecca in Connemara, Killery Bay,—a place renowned for its beautiful sunsets and splendid salmon.

My aunt is artistic—she herself used to draw when she was young—and I knew that nothing would please her better, as a present from Holland, than a number of carefully chosen water-colours.

Glowing with affectionate enthusiasm at the prospect of giving my aunt so agreeable a surprise, I made my way to the post-office and tried to send off my package.

An obliging official addressed me in English.

“Oh, then”, he said glancing at the address and weighing my bundle in his hand, “this will cost you about six guilders if it goes as a letter, but, if it is a book it will cost you two guilders and a half. But as it appears to be neither a book nor a letter, I should advise you to send it by ‘pakketpost’; the cost will be under a guilder. Please fill in these papers.” And he reached me a dark red paper and a flimsy white one both of which were dotted all over with Dutch and French hard words with spaces after them to be filled in.

I retired to a little desk and did my best,—stating that I, Jack O’Neill, aged so and so, sent one brown package of expensive water-colour pictures, some pencil-sketches and one pen-and-ink drawing, value unknown, to Miss Rebecca Fitzgerald O’Neill, (zonder beroep), Warlin Castle Killery Bay, Ireland, on the 21st of Aug., 19—. I added some other things here and there in the columns and gave this report to the official. “Not in order,” he said politely, “you must put stamps on the package, with wax.”

“Stamps,” he added, touching it all round, “sealed with sealing wax.”

“Oh, indeed!” I said. “Sorry to give you so much trouble. Many thanks!” And I carried my bundle to a neighbouring stationer’s.

The stationer was not at home, and his temporary assistant was a youth that did not know English; but I borrowed an Engelsch-Hollandsch WoordenBoek from him and instituted a search for wax. After some little trouble occasioned by the words ‘was’ and ‘honigraat’, I settled down comfortably on the word ‘lak’; and then the stationer’s boy and I got on quite nicely together. He helped me most willingly, and made all sorts of suggestions. We secured a candle and constructed two great seals, of red wax, as if was for the Lord Chancellor; and I returned to the Post-Office triumphant.

There was a new ‘ambtenaar’ on duty, the English-speaking one having apparently gone to luncheon.

“Mag ik beleefd verzoeken?” I said; “Zeker in orde?”

“Nee mijnheer”, he replied “volstrekt niet in orde! Er moeten vijf zegels op zijn—vijf.”

The bundle seemed safe enough to go half round the world! But he knew the rules; and I submitted accordingly, went back to the stationer and put five more seals on the packet, thus making the number seven in all.

On presenting my carefully prepared ‘pakje’ in the post-office I felt confident enough that it was right. “Nu, mijnheer, het is zeker klaar?”

The functionary was also disposed to think that all was as it ought to be and seemed at first to be satisfied.

He nodded approval; and gave me a friendly official smile; but suddenly—as he was laying the curious object aside—his eye caught the seal I had used, and his face fell. The seal was a very simple affair, having been impressed from the back of a guilder—a beautiful new specimen that I was reserving for show when I should return to Trinity.

“Nee, mijnheer”, he said sharply. “Heelemaal niet goed! Het moet een werkelijk zegel zijn—met letters—Uw naam!” And he drew imaginary initials on the blotting-paper with his thumb.

“Neen maar!—Mijnheer!” I exclaimed.

Words failed to come to my relief. I could think of nothing to say but “Gunst!” and in the circumstances this sounded too like a curse to venture upon. Presently however I recalled something under cover of which I could retire: “Het spijt mij erg—ik ben verbaasd—dank u vriendlijk.”

I went away sincerely regretting that I had begun this business at all. Fortunately when I hunted up the stationer once more, the man himself was at home; and after infinite rummaging in remote drawers he got me a seal with the letters N.J.,—which was a trifle like Jack O’Neill, if you read it backwards.

As that was the nearest approach I could get to my initials, and as no time was to be lost, we melted down another stick of red sealing-wax, and stamped the package over with seven gigantic seals, N.J.

I put on seven, though the official only demanded five, for I had an undefined fear that something would be wrong again. Meantime the ‘get up’ of the parcel was growing more impressive and unusual. The effect of the big letters of the seal was specially fine, the red bundle now looking as if it were bound for New Jersey.

Then in fear and trembling I made for the post-office again.

My tormentor appeared to be appeased. Ah yes, at last the letters were all right.

“Uitstekend, mijnheer,” he said. And he quite beamed upon me.

“Nu de formulieren, asjeblieft.”

Oh, the papers, of course! I had quite forgotten about them by this time. Fortunately I hadn’t lost them; so I handed him both documents. He took them up, smiling benignly on the foreigner who had managed to surmount so many obstacles; but alas! his satisfaction—and mine too—were of short duration. He frowned impatiently at the brown paper. “Nee, mijnheer,” he growled; “niet goed!” And he pushed papers and package and all to me, as if he was mortally offended.

“HÉ, mijnheer!” I ejaculated—“Hoe is dat? Kom toch! Wat is niet goed?”

“Geen zegel! geen zegel!” he thundered magisterially, with a contemptuous toss of the brown formulier in my direction. Like a shot he turned to a schoolboy of fourteen at my elbow, (who had meantime been studying my writings and reading them audibly to his companions)—“En U?” he enquired.

I felt dismissed, if not disgraced! And no investigation of my belongings could throw any light on my blunder. The brown manuscript was at fault I knew; so, as the best thing possible I entered a solemn declaration, opposite the hiernevens, “een pakje met 7 zegels”, and booked the same remark on a convenient spot on the white paper. This done, I returned to the charge promptly, but with much inward apprehension. The cue of people pushing forward to buy stamps and send things away and generally to transact business, had grown to a long line nearly to the door. Humbly I took my place at the end of the file, about twenty minutes off the ambtenaar. It wasn’t quite twenty minutes, but it felt longer; for every now and then the ambtenaar glanced up, when he had served a customer, and his eye invariably fell on me. It was a long-drawn-out agony, that approach to the loket, under official inspection, so to speak; and I had plenty of time to register a silent bet with myself that the authorities were not done with me. They’d be sure to give me another journey to the stationer’s.

And so they did! Without deigning to look at my official guarantee about the 7 zegels the Postal Radamanthus began with vitriolic self-restraint: “Ik—heb—U—gezegd. Er—moet—een zegel—op.”

“Oh mynheer!” I burst out in hot indignation, “Hoe kunt U dat zeggen? Kijk! Het is allemaal zegels!” And indeed the parcel was almost completely coated with wax.

A spasm passed over his face, and he controlled himself by a severe effort. “Ik—heb—U—al—meer maal—gezegd”—His voice rose higher and higher, and he bit off the words as if they were poison. “Hier moet de afdruk van het zegel komen.—Hierr!” And he waved a white hand over the coloured formulier and finally dropped his thumb, like a pancake, over a lozenge-shaped diagram filled with Dutch and French words. “Hier!!”

Ah yes! Just so. Now I saw what was wanted, and I departed speechlessly to the sealing-wax-shop again.

By this time I was quite domesticated there: so I took a good rest and then put on a formidable seal on the lozenge. In half an hour I was back again on the premises of Rhadamanthus, at the end of another cue, wondering if I could reach the loket before it would be closed for the day. You see all that marching to and fro, and arguing with officials, and cooking sealing-wax, and waiting your turn in a crowd, swallows up an immensity of time.

At last I was before the little window and handed in the documents. “Ja, ja. De zegel is in orde!”

“In orde, mijnheer!” he added with a cherubic smile. “Best.” “Maar—maar wat hebben we hier?” he muttered as he perused my other remarks on the papers. He appeared somewhat nonplussed by my opmerkingen as to the contents of package, and ran his pen through all my art criticisms; then suddenly said roughly. “Heet U Rebecca O’Neill?”

This was so unexpected a query that it threw me off my guard and I answered in English.

“Do I hate her? Oh no. On the contrary, I am sincerely attached to her. But why do you ask?”

He said “Exkuseer” and called another ambtenaar—one who talked English. This new functionary opened fire at once, “Sir, is your name Rebecca O’Neill?”

“Bless my heart”, I said; “Not at all. That’s my aunt.”

“In that case, sir, you have sent the package to yourself, and filled in the declarations all wrongly”.

“Is there no way,” I said in despair, “to send this thing off? I have been all morning labouring at it, and I can’t get rid of it. Would you mind accepting it as a gift—just a little friendly gift, you know, as a token of my appreciation of the post-office arrangements? Or would there be any objection to my leaving it here lying on your desk? It’s quite harmless; perhaps even elegant—that depends on taste—but I don’t care for it any more! It’s no further use to me. Will you have it?”

“Oh hÉ! you mean it is of no value?”

“No value—not the least”, I said, glad to see a chance of disposing of it.

“Then you can send it off as, well—what we call—Monster zonder waarde—monster—monster—I remember not your English word?”

“Oh,” said I, “it is all right as it is. You don’t need it translated. ‘Monster’ is quite good English—and very expressive.”

“Then,” said he; “that is it—Worthless Monster. That must you write—on the package. Then will it cost you a dubbeltje; and it will go off at once. No wax will be needed, and no papers. No trouble of any kind.”

“I am delighted with your kindness,” said I to him. “You have relieved my mind.”

“Will you put the name on it now?” he enquired courteously, reaching me his own pen from behind his ear. “Please write legibly the English declaration. I shall do the Dutch for you. It must be plain.”

“If you don’t mind,” I said, “as you are so kind, might I ask you just to write both English and Dutch?”

A glance had shown me that these curious words would have to come uncomfortably near my aunt’s name; and as my aunt is rather a particular old lady with very definite notions about her own dignity, I judged it prudent that this title of distinction with which she was going to be invested should be drawn up in other handwriting than her nephew’s. She had a hawk’s eye and could detect every scratch I made with the pen.

“If it’s not too much trouble, please put the whole declaration on it yourself. You’ll find a place here”, I said, turning over the unsightly object. “There’s a little room left here, I think—just beside the address”.

He looked it all over. It was quite true. The parcel was all a mass of red wax and “N.J.’s” except round about the address, where we had kept the wax well off it for fear of infringing some other regulation.

“English first!” he said, making use of the vacant space.

And in Roman letters just after my aunt’s name he boldly penned the mystic words, first in English, and then, in brackets, in Dutch. This is how it ran:

After that I wouldn’t touch the parcel.

I declined all further responsibility in connection with it; and, leaving it with him, retired, as from a good day’s work.

As I knew my aunt, I felt sure she would appreciate the delicate compliment implied by the proximity of the postal notice to her name.

This indeed proved the case, when I visited her later in the autumn. I draw a veil over our interview; but happily my aunt is fond of a joke, and when I told her my adventures of that morning, she laughed as she had not done for years, until I flattered myself she had forgotten the queer declaration on her package.

At the end, however, she suddenly drew herself up and, raising a reproving finger, said, “Well, it wasn’t your writing! or I shouldn’t let you off so easily, Jack. But what kind of a functionary was that, now, who would dare, in your presence, to insult your aunt?”

“In my young days a lad of spirit would have called out a villain like that,—yes, or a fellow that ventured on the twentieth part of such an atrocity!”

“Jack, Jack, where’s your chivalry?”

“Calm yourself, my dear aunt,” I retorted. “Its only that you don’t catch the niceties of a translation. But you’ll pick that up soon enough if you go over with me to the Hague next year.”

“Never”, said my aunt firmly.