ONE: O ladies caper light--"In cordage and material for ship-building there is a good exhibit, and there are two well-made models of gun-boats. Wheat, rice, millet, and other grains are represented by numerous samples, and there are several specimens of Indian-corn, or maize, grown on Japanese soil. There is a goodly array of canned fruits and meats, mostly the former, some in tin and the rest in glass. Vinegars, rice-whiskey, soy, and the like are abundant, and so is dried fish of several kinds. There is a good display of tea and tobacco, the former being in every form, from the tea-plant up to the prepared article ready for shipment. One has only to come here to see the many uses to which the Japanese put fibrous grasses in making mats, overcoats, and similar things; and there are like displays of the serviceability of bamboo. From the north of Japan there are otter and other skins, and from various points there are models of boats and nets to illustrate the fishing business. The engineering department shows some fine models of bridges and dams, and has evidently made good progress since its organization."
TWO:This absolute numbness came with him into his library, where he went when his wife and daughter, on the warning of the pink clock, proceeded upstairs, after the usual kisses. He did not want to wake his sensibilities up, simply because he did not want anything. Even here, in his secret garden, all he saw round him was meaningless: his library was a big pleasant room and he wondered why he had kept it so sacredly remote from his wife and Alice. There were some books in it, of course. Hugh had got a mercantile idea from one, Alice had been a little shy of an illustration in another, and for some reason he had felt that these attitudes were not tuned to the spirit he found here. But to-night there was no spirit of any kind here, and Alice might be shocked if she chose, Hugh might pick up hints for the printing of advertisements, his wife might put the Leonardo volume in her chair if she did not find it high enough, and if that did not give her the desirable position in which to doze most comfortably, there was the catalogue ready to make her a footstool. Books, books?... They were all strange and silly. In some there were pictures over which he had pored, in others there were verses that had haunted{320} his memory as with magic, and all had a certain perfection about them, whether in print or page or binding or picture, that had once satisfied and intoxicated a certain desire for beauty that he had once felt. There they were on their shelves, there was the catalogue that described them, and the shelves were full of corpses, and the catalogue was like a column of deaths in the daily paper, of some remote individuals that concerned him no more than the victims of a plague in Ethiopia.Well, Ive never enjoyed an hours chat more, she said, as Keeling returned after seeing their guests off, and it seemed no more than five minutes. She was all affability, wasnt she, Alice? and so full of admiration for all mywhat did she call them? Some French word.
ONE:She went back to her mothers room and deliberately proceeded to torture herself. She had been to blame throughout, and not a spark of anger or resentment came to comfort her. All these past months he had brought joy and purpose into her aimless life, and she had but bitten the hand that fed her, and even worse than that, had scolded its owner for his bounty. It was with a sense of incredulity that she recalled some of her awful phrases, her rude, snappish interruptions, and yet in the midst of her self-humiliation she knew that she felt thrills of excitement, both at what had happened and what was taking shape in her brain as to what was going to happen. She had just that pleasure in her agonies of self-reproach, as does the penitent who scourges himself. She liked it to hurt, she gloried in the castigation that was surely doing her good.
TWO:
