FORE:But the heedless throng of fashionables recked nothing of this. The Countess Lalage was their latest craze. Who she was or where she came from nobody knew nor cared. She was young and wonderfully beautiful in a dashing Southern way, her equipages were an amazement to the park; she must have been immensely rich, or she would never have entertained as she did. There must have been a Count Lalage at one time, for generally a pretty little girl rode with the Countess, and this child was her daughter. The Countess spoke casually of large South American concessions and silver mines, so that Oxford Street and Regent Street bowed down and worshipped her.
FORE:A plague on names! But I was not done with them yet. We met other scouts coming out of the east, who also gave reports and went on westward, sometimes through the trackless woods. At a broad cross-road which spanned the whole State from the Alabama line to the Mississippi River stood another sergeant, with three men, waiting. They were the last.
FORE:"The Chinese have a great many gods, and pretty nearly every god has a temple in some part of Pekin. There is a fine temple to Confucius, which is surrounded by some trees that are said to be five hundred years old; the temple has a high roof which is very elaborately carved, and looks pretty both from a distance and when you are close by it. But there are no statues in the temple, as the Chinese do not worship Confucius through a statue, but by means of a tablet on which his name is inscribed. The other deities have their statues, and you may see the god of war with a long beard and mustache. The Chinese have very slight beards, and it is perhaps for this reason that they frequently represent their divinities as having a great deal of hair on their faces, so as to indicate their superiority to mortals. Then they have a god of literature, who is represented standing on the head of a large fish, and waving a pencil in his right hand, while he holds in his left a cap such as is worn by the literary graduates after they have received their degrees.[Pg 368] The god of literature is worshipped a great deal by everybody who is studying for a degree, and by those whose ancestors or other relatives have been successful in carrying away the honors at an examination. Think what it would be to have such a divinity in our colleges and schools[Pg 369] in America, and the amount of worship he would get if the students really believed in him!"The birds dive off from the raft, and can swim under water with great rapidity. Sometimes they are not inclined to fish, and require to be pushed off, and, perhaps, beaten a little by their master. If they have been well trained, they swim directly towards the raft, when they rise to the surface; but sometimes a cormorant will go off the other way, in the hope of being able to swallow the fish he holds in his mouth. In such case the fisherman[Pg 348] follows and captures the runaway, punishing him soundly for his misconduct. Whenever a bird catches a fish and brings it to the raft, he is rewarded with a mouthful of food. In this way he soon learns to associate his success with something to eat; and a cormorant that has been well trained has a good deal of fidelity in his composition. I am uncertain which to admire most, the dexterity of the fisherman in handling his raft, or the perseverance and celerity of the cormorants."
THREE:"I know, Captain," she said, "that we can't have longings, strivings, or hopes, without beliefs; beliefs are what they live on. I believe in being strong and sweet and true for the pure sake of being so; and yet more for the world's sake; and as much more again for God's sake as God is greater than his works. I believe in beauty and in joy. I believe they are the goal of all goodness and of all God's work and wish. As to resurrection, punishment, and reward, I can't see what my noblest choice has to do with them; they seem to me to be God's part of the matter; mine is to love perfect beauty and perfect joy, both in and infinitely beyond myself, with the desiring love with which I rejoice to believe God loves them, and to pity the lack of them with the loving pity with which God pities it. And above all I believe that no beauty and no joy can be perfect apart from a love that loves the whole world's joy better than any separate joy of any separate soul."
THREE:[Pg 209]
