The News And Herald

Detroit Belles as Smugglers:

Ladies of good families who have wealth at their command make the most desperate smugglers, and are dealt with the hardest by the officers, as they do not deserve as much leniency or sympathy as the poor woman who has invested her little all and would be destitute if stringently dealt with, and to whom the good bargain, duty free, is really a great temptation. The class of goods which Canadians buy in Detroit and smuggle to Canada is cotton cloth, domestic and dress goods. The Detroit purchaser steps on the ferry and goes over to Windsor for gloves, laces, silks, velvets and cashmeres, these articles being considered much cheaper and better, whether they are or not. There are hundreds of Detroit ladies wearing velvet and silk dresses who smuggled them over folded neatly about their angelic waists or disposed of in their bosoms, while they passed the custom house officer, the lynx-eyed female detectives, the landing waiters, and with serene countenances walked off with their spoils. One lady boasts of the amount of goods she can carry over at a single trip. The smuggling mania has taken such possession of her that she has smuggled for her friends, merely to keep up the excitement. She has acquired such a knack of arranging the goods about her person that a whole bolt of cotton does not give her the least uneasiness, and she can carry at one trip, half a dozen silk dresses; yet the lady herself is by no means of insignificant bulk. It is a great mistake the idea that thin women make the most successful smugglers. The slightest additional fullness betrays them. But plump divinity can add fifty pounds to her tournure and no one will be the wiser.