The Ghost Shipment of Charles B. Langtry

There is no clear-cut, outstanding figure, no many-sided human individuality, but what is to be thought of the name itself, 'Chas. B. Langtry'? Is it not realistic? If the shipment of skins be fictitious, then the inventive clerk went in quest of a name. The 'Idaho' possesses her route for the express purpose of connecting remote Alaskan ports with the great business centers to the southward. She is, practically, a monopoly of the traffic upon the unfrequented waters. Her lines of traffic, in consequence of these characteristics and the high tariff on the importation of opium into this country, presented facilities for smuggling unparalleled and impossible to be surpassed. But, as if the conditions afforded by her lines of traffic were not sufficiently favorable for fraud upon the revenue, she was allowed by the officials of the United States Treasury Department to land goods at all points on the route and at all hours of the day or night, without special permit and without any check whatever, except an Inspector of the Customs on board, who, for all the apparent use he has been to the Government, might as well have been nominated by the owners of the steamship or her master, or the would-be smugglers, and who, according to the mildest construction of that part of his career which is ventilated in this case, has been utterly at sea as regards the very violations of law he was salaried to detect and prevent, and who is most felicitously described in two words he has himself chosen to give under oath as his title—'Inspector Afloat.'