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TWO:"Hello, Smith." He scanned my dripping horse. "Your saddle's slipped, Smith. Yes, she's alive.""There is a funny little islandand not so little, after all, as it is three hundred feet highthat stands right in the middle of the river at one place. They call it the Little Orphan Rock, probably because it was never known to have any father or mother. There is a temple in the side of the rock, as if a niche had been cut to receive it. Fred thinks the people who live there ought not to complain of their ventilation and drainage; and if they fell out of the front windows by any accident, they would not be worth much when picked up. Away up on the top of the rock there is a little temple that would make a capital light-house,[Pg 338] but I suppose the Chinese are too far behind the times to think of turning it to any practical use. Great Orphan Rock is farther up the river, or a little out of the river, in what they call Po-yang Lake.We offer the best Services in our Restarant.
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TWO:We offer the best Services in our Restarant.
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TWO:Doctor Bronson arranged that the party should visit Wo-chang and see a famous pagoda that stood on the bank of the river. There was not a great deal to see after they got there, as the place was not in good repair, and contained very little in the way of statues and idols. The stairways were narrow and dark, and the climb to the top was not accomplished without difficulty. Afterwards they went through the principal streets, and visited the shops, which they found much like those of Shanghai and Chin-kiang. The people showed some curiosity in looking at the strangersmore than they had found farther down the riverfor the reason, doubtless, that fewer foreigners go there.I had not the faintest doubt she was lying. What was I to her? The times were fearfully out of joint; women as well as men were taking war's licenses, and with a boy's unmerciful directness I sprang to the conclusion that here was an adventuress. Yet I had some better thoughts too. While I felt a moral tipsiness going into all my veins, I asked myself if it was not mainly due to my own inability to rise in full manliness to a most exceptional situation. Her jaunty method of confronting it, was I not failing to regard that with due magnanimity? Was this the truth, or after all ought I really to see that at every turn of her speech, by coy bendings of the head, by the dark seductions of dim half-captive locks about her oval temples, and by many an indescribable swaying of the form and of the voice, I was being--to speak it brutally--challenged? Even in the poetic obscurity of the night I lost all steadiness of eye as I pertly said--We offer the best Services in our Restarant.
