Fred thereupon began to moralize on the policy of introducing Japanese customs into America. He thought more practicable good could be done by the adoption of the Japanese cupwhich would teach our people[Pg 96] to drink more lightly than at presentthan by Frank's plan of introducing the Japanese pillow. He thought there would be some drawbacks to Frank's enterprise, which would offset the good it could do. Thus a great number of people whom the pillow might bring up at an early hour would spend the time in ways that would not be any benefit to society, and they might as well be asleep, and in many cases better, too. But the tiny drinking-cup would moderate the quantity of stimulants many persons would take, and thus a great good might be accomplished.
"Those will do," Fred answered, "and here is Longfellow's famous poem 'Excelsior,' which every schoolboy knows, or ought to know. It was done into pidgin English by somebody who lived in the country and evidently knew what he was about:I went down to the supper-table. Camille was there, dispensing its promiscuous hospitality to men who ate like pigs. I would as leave have found her behind a French-market coffee-stand. Harry Helm, nursing his bandaged hand, was lolling back from the board and quizzing her with compliments while she cut up his food. A fellow in the chair next mine said he had seen me with Ferry when we joined the Louisianians' charge. "Your aide-de-camp friend over yonder's a-gitt'n' lots o' sweetenin' with his grub; well, he deserves it."
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ONE:PRESENTING FOOD TO THE SPIRITS OF THE DEAD. PRESENTING FOOD TO THE SPIRITS OF THE DEAD.'Tis very fine to hear them carolled
TWO:As the doctor concentrated upon a delayed tea, his mind lapsed into its usual condition of fretful scepticism. Gregg's idea that the Clockwork man represented a mystery, if not a miracle, enraged him. At forty a man does not readily welcome discoveries that may upset his own world of accepted facts, and Allingham had long since given up the habit of following the latest results of scientific investigation. Years ago he had made his own small researches, only to discover that others were making them at the same time. He had had his gleamings in common with all the other students of his year. Everybody was having gleamings then of vast possibilities in medical science, especially in the direction of nervous pathology and the study of morbid diseases resulting from highly complex methods of living. There had been much sound work, a good deal of irresponsible mud-raking, and, in Allingham's case, a growing suspicion that the human organism was not standing very well the strains imposed upon it by modern civilisation. He had wondered then if some experiments would not be made some day in[Pg 45] the pursuit of evolutionary doctrines as applied to physiological progressbut that had been the most ephemeral of all his gleams.
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ONE:Ill soon settle that, he said, going out.
TWO:"They've one consolation," Fred remarked"they have their compasses always about them, and have no need to figure up their reckoning with 'Bowditch's Navigator' to know which way to steer."Ah, that would be a great treat. Let us do that, in any case, Sir Thomas. Surely we can go in some back way so as to escape my wifes notice if she is really waiting outside. It will do her good to wait: she is very impatient.
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TWO:But he was alive. The Doctor had made sure of that by certain tentative experiments; and he had also taken advantage of his passive condition in order to make a thorough examinationso far as was possibleof this marvel of the future. As a result of his investigation, the Doctor had failed to come to any definite conclusion; there was merely deepened in him a sense of outrage and revolt. It was impossible to accept the Clockwork man as a human being.
FORE:The strange figure stopped flapping his ears and opened his mouth. He opened it unpleasantly wide, as though trying to yawn. Then he shut it with a sharp snap, and without yawning. After that he shifted his whole body very slowly, as though endeavouring to arouse himself from an enormous apathy. And then he appeared to be waiting for something to happen.
FORE:He had been glad to abandon the hospitals in favour of a comfortable practice and the leisured life of a country town. Great Wymering had offered him plenty of distractions that soothed the slight wound to his vanity caused by the discovery that he had over-estimated his originality. In a few years much had happened that helped to confirm his new view of himself as a social creature with a taste for the amenities of existence. And then he had been able to keep up his cricket. In the winter there were bridge parties, amateur theatricals, dinner parties with quite ordinary but agreeable people, local affairs into which a man whose health was under suspicion and whose sympathies were just perceptibly narrowing, could plunge without too much effort being required in order to rise to such occasions. And he had the witty temperament. Quite easily, he maintained a reputation for turning out a bon-mot on the spur of the moment, something with a faint element of paradox. He would say such things as, "Only those succeed in life who have brains and can forget the fact," or "To be idle is the goal of all men, but only the industrious achieve it." When taunted by[Pg 46] a young lady who suspected him of wasted talents, even genius, he retorted that "Genius is only an accumulation of neglected diseases."KATHLEEN'S EXPECTATIONS FOR FRANK AND FRED. KATHLEEN'S EXPECTATIONS FOR FRANK AND FRED.
FORE:
FORE:
FORE:BARBER SHAVING THE HEAD OF A CUSTOMER. BARBER SHAVING THE HEAD OF A CUSTOMER.
FORE:At the highest point of the mountainabout eighteen hundred feet above the water-levelthere is a signal-station, where all vessels coming into port are announced by means of flags. Our friends were carried along a zigzag road to this station, the coolies stopping every few minutes to rest from the fatigue of ascending a steep road with a burden on their shoulders. At the station they had a view extending a long distance out to sea and over the coast of China, and the mountain was so nearly perpendicular that it seemed as if they could toss a penny on the town or into the harbor. Fred tried it, and so did Frank; but after throwing away several ounces of copper, and finding they only went a short distance, they abandoned the experiment. They returned well satisfied with the excursion, and agreed that no one who visits Hong-kong should omit the journey to the top of the mountain.
TWO:"Oh, yes there is; he goes by various names, but one of them is Ned Ferry. Sergeant, we'll kick together; now!"--Bang!Mrs Goodford finished her plum tart.
TWO:And where should we have been if I hadnt demeaned myself with business? he asked. Didnt the new wing of the hospital and your pearl pendant, and your chatting like an old friend to a Princess all come out of my demeaning myself?{252}
Oh, I wish you hadnt done that! she said. Does Lord Inverbroom know that?An hour later the Doctor alone paced the floor of the little surgery."I beg your pardon," said Arthur, hastily."No, he never! the other one went to her, in cahoots with Oliver, and worked the thing all through so's to have the news of Oliver's death, so called, come back here to the Yankees and us; and to his wife, so's she would marry Ned Ferry to her everlasting shame, and people would say they was served right when he killed 'em at last! O--oh! Smith,--"