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Audiobook edition · 3 h 17 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if saving a few pennies turns your own household into a nest of cheerful smugglers?
In The Cheerful Smugglers, Ellis Parker Butler brings a private tariff into an ordinary family home. The household has its own rules, and its members find ways to slip things past them. Small savings become tempting prizes. What begins as a domestic arrangement gives everyone a reason to scheme, dodge and test how far those rules can stretch.
Butler builds his gentle satire around everyday American life, where each family member has habits, hopes and opinions. A plan made in one room must survive the people in the next. As small schemes grow larger than anyone intends, the fun lies in the gap between keeping order and keeping a few pennies. The stakes stay domestic, and the mood stays light.
What you’ll discover
- A tariff at home Discover the comic possibilities of a family that brings customs rules into its own household.
- Small savings, bigger schemes Follow the odd lengths people go to when a few pennies seem worth the trouble.
- Family plans under pressure Watch private schemes meet the competing habits and opinions of others in the family.
- Gentle mischief throughout Enjoy small rule-breaking and ordinary troubles without the weight of dark, serious drama.
- Everyday life, another time Find period flavor in shopping, travel and the household response to customs rules.
Who will love it
Readers who enjoy family farce, quick banter and arguments that grow out of everyday rules will find plenty here. It suits anyone who likes a comedy of marriage, money and young love told with a smile.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A Household Tariff Is Born
- Kitty Leaves Her Trunks Outside
- Billy Argues Like a Lawyer
- Bridget Bargains and Billy Plays Detective
- Everyone Smuggles and Congress Fails
- Rules, Love and Who Rules the House
Who’s who
- Tom FenelbyA cheerful, bald, bespectacled husband who invents the household tariff for his baby son's education and then cannot resist smuggling.
- Laura FenelbyTom's practical wife, who manages the house and her husband and plays along with his schemes while keeping her own secrets.
- BobbertsThe nine-month-old baby whose future college fund is the cause of the tariff, and who is both a Territory and a ruler.
- KittyLaura's lively cousin, who wants to rescue Laura from her husband and has no intention of paying duty on her dresses.
- Billy FenelbyTom's brother, a young lawyer and former football player who claims to dislike girls and takes up amateur detective work.
- BridgetThe Irish maid, who bargains for her wages, watches everyone's quarrels and always insists she is not one to dictate.
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Les joyeux contrebandiers in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Les joyeux contrebandiers
by Ellis Parker Butler · 1908
A baby's college fund becomes a household tariff, and trunks and cigar boxes become chances to dodge the rules.
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In short
What if you taxed your own house to pay for your baby's college? Tom and Laura Fenelby, a young suburban couple in Ellis Parker Butler's comic novel The Cheerful Smugglers, do exactly that.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A Household Tariff Is Born
Tom Fenelby and his wife Laura have saved pennies for their baby, Bobberts, for nine months. The pottery bank holds only twenty-three dollars and thirty-eight cents. Tom decides that pennies will never carry a boy through Yale.
His answer is the Fenelby tariff. Like a nation, the house will charge a duty on everything brought in. Necessities pay ten percent and luxuries thirty, and the money goes to the education fund. Tom names his home the Commonwealth of Bobberts, with a family congress in the parlor.
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What is The Cheerful Smugglers about?
It is a comic novel about Tom and Laura Fenelby, who put a household tariff on everything brought into their home to fund their baby's college. When two guests arrive, the family argues, schemes and smuggles to avoid their own law.
What is the Fenelby tariff in the book?
It is a family tax invented by Tom. Everything brought into the house pays a duty into the baby's bank, ten percent for necessities and thirty percent for luxuries. A family congress meets to change the rules and vote.
Who are Kitty and Billy?
Kitty is Laura's lively cousin, and Billy is Tom's brother, a young lawyer and former football player. They come to visit at the same time, follow the tariff in their own ways, and spar with each other all the way through.
The author
Ellis Parker Butler
1869–1937 · American humorist
Ellis Parker Butler (1869–1937) was an American writer born in Muscatine, Iowa. He later lived in Flushing, New York, and died in Massachusetts. He wrote short stories and novels, including Pigs Is Pigs (1906) and Philo Gubb, Correspondence-School Detective (1918). His writing also appeared in American magazines.
More by Ellis Parker Butler
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