He thought that people talked less and less as they drew nearer home; but on the last day out there was a sudden expansion, and some whom he had not spoken with voluntarily addressed him.  The sweet, soft air was like midsummer the water rippled gently, without a swell, blue under the clear sky, and the ship left a wide track that was silver in the sun.  There were more sail; the first and second class baggage was got up and piled along the steerage deck.

Some people dressed a little more than usual for the last dinner which was earlier than usual, so as to be out of the way against the arrival which had been variously predicted at from five to seven-thirty.  An indescribable nervousness culminated with the appearance of the customs officers on board, who spread their papers on cleared spaces of the dining-tables, and summoned the passengers to declare that they had nothing to declare, as a preliminary to being searched like thieves at the dock.

This ceremony proceeded while the Cupania made her way up the Narrows, and into the North River, where the flare of lights from the crazy steeps and cliffs of architecture on the New York shore seemed a persistence of the last Fourth of July pyrotechnics.  March blushed for the grotesque splendor of the spectacle, and was confounded to find some Englishmen admiring it, till he remembered that aesthetics were not the strong point of our race.  His wife sat hand in hand with Miss Triscoe, and from time to time made him count the pieces of small baggage in the keeping of their steward; while General Triscoe held aloof in a sarcastic calm.

The steamer groped into her dock; the gangways were lifted to her side; the passengers fumbled and stumbled down their incline, and at the bottom the Marches found themselves respectively in the arms of their son and daughter.  They all began talking at once, and ignoring and trying to remember the Triscoes to whom the young Marches were presented.  Bella did her best to be polite to Agatha, and Tom offered to get an inspector for the general at the same time as for his father.  Then March, remorsefully remembered the Eltwins, and looked about for them, so that his son might get them an inspector too.  He found the major already in the hands of an inspector, who was passing all his pieces after carelessly looking into one:  the official who received the declarations on board had noted a Grand Army button like his own in the major’s lapel, and had marked his fellow-veteran’s paper with the mystic sign which procures for the bearer the honor of being promptly treated as a smuggler, while the less favored have to wait longer for this indignity at the hands of their government.  When March’s own inspector came he was as civil and lenient as our hateful law allows; when he had finished March tried to put a bank-note in his hand, and was brought to a just shame by his refusal of it.  The bed-room steward keeping guard over the baggage helped put-it together after the search, and protested that March had feed him so handsomely that he would stay there with it as long as they wished.  This partly restored March’s self-respect, and he could share in General Triscoe’s indignation with the Treasury ruling which obliged him to pay duty on his own purchases in excess of the hundred-dollar limit, though his daughter had brought nothing, and they jointly came far within the limit for two.