THREE:"They squeeze the ankles in much the same way, by making the man kneel on the ground, with his ankles in a frame of three sticks that are fastened together at one end by a cord like that of the finger-squeezer. Then, when all is ready, they pull at the cord and draw the sticks nearer to each other, so that pressure is brought on the ankles. The pain is intense, and the most demure Chinaman is not able to stand it without shrinking. This mode of torture, like the other, is used to make prisoners confess the crimes of which they are accused, and they generally confess them. It is said that witnesses may be subjected to the ankle torture, but with the modification in their favor that only one ankle can be squeezed at a time. Very kind, isn't it?The conference lasted some time. Keeling was but learning now, through this one channel of books, that attitude of mind which through instinct, whetted and primed by education, came naturally to the younger man, and it was just this that made these talks the very essence of the secret garden. Propert, for all that he was but an employee at a few pounds a week,{43} was gardener there; he knew the names of the flowers, and what was more, he had that comprehension and love of them which belongs to the true gardener and not the specimen grower or florist only. It was that which Keeling sought to acquire, and among the prosperous family friends, who were associated with him in the management of civic affairs, or in business relationships, he found no opportunity of coming in contact with a similar mind. But Propert was freeborn in this republic of art and letters, and Keeling was eager to acquire at any cost the sense of native, unconscious citizenship. He felt he belonged there, but he had to win his way back there.... He must have learned the language in some psychically dim epoch of his existence, for exploration among these alleys in his garden had to him the thrill not of discovery, but the more delicate sense of recollection, of revisiting forgotten scenes which were remembered as soon as they disentangled themselves again from the jungle of materialistic interests that absorbed him all the week. Mr Keeling had very likely hardly heard of the theory of reincarnation, and had some modern Pythagoras spoken to him of beans, he would undoubtedly have considered it great nonsense. But he would have confessed to the illusion (the fancy he would have called it) of having known something of all this before when Propert, with his handsome face{44} aglow and his eyes alight, sat and turned over books with him thus, forgetting, as his own absorption increased, to interject his sentences with the respectful sir of their ordinary week-day intercourse. Keeling ceased to be the proprietor and master of the universal stores, he ceased even to be the proprietor of his own books. They and their pictures and their binding and their aroma of the kingdom of intellect and beauty, were common possessions of all who chose to claim them, and belonged to neither of them individually any more than the French language belongs to the teacher who instructs and the pupil who learns.
作为一个上班族的你，是否经常感觉到工作生活压力巨大，时刻感觉自己快要HOLD不住了，有时候甚至一度怀疑自己得了抑郁症？别担心，其实没那么可怕，这都是慢性疲劳的症状。但是当你意
