TWO:"We saw a good many temples, and went through some of them, but, on the whole, they were rather disappointing, as they were not so fine as those at Pekin, and far behind those of Japan. The most interesting of the pagodas is the one known as the 'Five-storied Pagoda,' so called because[Pg 412] it is five stories high. It stands on a hill that overlooks the whole city on one side, and a large cemetery on the other; and when you have climbed to the top, the view is very fine. The roofs of the houses are of all shapes and kinds, and the streets are so narrow that you can see very few of them as you look down from the top of the pagoda. On the one hand you have a densely peopled city of the living, and on the other an equally densely peopled city of the dead. Our guide said the cemetery had more inhabitants than the city; and when we asked him how many people lived there, he said 'Many millions.' You have to come to China to learn that the people in a cemetery are supposed to live there.Then she had gone back with her shorthand notes to her room, and all morning the noise of her nimble fingers disturbed him through the felt-lined door. He was in two minds about that: sometimes he thought he would send her into Hughs room, where another typewriter worked. Hugh was accustomed to the clack of the machine, and two would be no worse than one. Then again he thought that the muffling of the noise alone disturbed him, that if she sat at the table in the window, and did her work there, he would not notice it. It was the concealed clacking of the keys that worried him. Perhaps it would even help him to attend to his own business to see how zealously she attended to hers. Those deft long fingers! They were the incarnation of the efficiency which to him was the salt of life.
