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310 with even greater rudeness and force: the orders are that none shall be allowed to go on board until the custom-house officers have done their work. Half a dozen United States Navy officers, from the squadron in Chinese and Japanese waters, coming-home on leave of absence, come down the after-gangway, and are told to get their luggage all together in one place on the wharf, and it will be passed immediately by the officers. Their lacquered boxes, trunks, open-work, rattan chairs and lounges for reclining upon in a tropical climate, boxes of rare plants, and small collections of "curios" from the far East—West it seems to us—are soon run through, and chalked with the names of the examining officers, and they enter carriages in waiting, and are driven away to the hotels. A stout-built, manly-looking American, forty years of age or thereabouts, comes down the plank, and a fair-faced woman, who, with her four half-grown-up children around her, has been standing patiently for hours in a corner of the building on the wharf, grows suddenly pale in the face, runs towards him, and with the single exclamation, "O Joe!" has her arms around his neck in an instant. A few ladies and gentlemen, looking curiously about them, issue from the cabin, point out their luggage on the wharf, receive the proper directions, and, entering carriages admitted through the gates one at a time to receive them, are hurried away, apparently half glad at finding themselves standing on the solid land once more, half sorry to part from those with whom they have voyaged across the broad Pacific, and dared the perils of