ONE:THE PATERNAL NURSE. THE PATERNAL NURSE."Why," said I, "as to that, Lieutenant Ferry believes there's something right about everything that's beautiful, and something wrong about everything that isn't. Now, of course that's a very dangerous idea, and yet--" So I went on; ah me! the nightmare of it hangs over me yet, "religionist" though I am, after a fashion, unto this day. In Ferry's defence I maintained that only so much of any man's religion as fitted him, and fitted him not as his saddle or his clothes, but as his nervous system fitted him, was really his, or was really religion. I said I knew a man whose ready-made religion, small as it was, bagged all over him and made him as grotesque as a child in his father's trousers. The chaplain tittered so approvingly that I straightened to spout again, but just then we saw three distant figures that I knew at a glance.
TWO:There are many other temples in Tokio besides Asakusa, and the stranger who wishes to devote his time to the study of Japanese temples can have his wishes gratified to the fullest degree. After our party had finished the sights of Asakusa, they went to another quarter where they spent an hour among temples that were less popular, though more elegant, than those of the locality we have just described. The beauty of the architecture and the general elegance of the interior of the structures captivated them, and they unhesitatingly pronounced the religious edifices of Japan the finest they had ever seen.
ONE:There were not many passengers, perhaps a dozen in all, and they were mostly merchants and other residents of Shanghai on their way to Europe or to some of the southerly ports of Asia. Two of the passengers were accompanied by their Chinese servants, and the boys were greatly amused to hear the efforts of the latter to speak English. They had already heard the same kind of thing during their movements in China, but had not paid much attention to it in consequence of their occupation with other matters. Now, however, they had some leisure for investigation, and Fred suggested that they had better take a glance at the Chinese language.
TWO:"Oh, God, it's the end of all things, Gregg.[Pg 171] It's the end of all sane hopes for the human race. If it is true that in the future man has come to this, then the whole of history is a farce and mockery. The universe is no more than a box of conjuring tricks, and man is simply a performing monkey. I tell you, Gregg, this discovery, if it is made known, will blast everything good in existence."
ONE:"What for you go top-side look-see?"
TWO:New York, October, 1879."But they were not made by the Japanese, as this one was," Frank responded, "and they are statues of figures standing erect, while this represents a sitting figure. A sitting figure sixty feet high is something you don't see every day."
