FATHER AND CHILDREN. FATHER AND CHILDREN.The Doctor explained that legal tender was the money which the law declares should be the proper tender, or offer, in paying a debt. "If[Pg 26] I owed your father a hundred dollars," said he, "I could not compel him to accept the whole amount in ten-cent pieces, or twenty-five-cent pieces, or even in half-dollars. When the government issues a coin, it places a limit for which that coin can be a legal tender. Thus the ten-cent piece is a legal tender for all debts of one dollar or less, and the half-dollar for debts of five dollars or less."
ONE:Alice looked not at him as she said these remarkable words but at the pink clock on the chimney-piece. She had the recklessness of physical weakness in her, she did not care what happened, if only one thing happened. If he would not take that lure, she was quite prepared to try him with another."Just think of it, Fred," said he, "we are to see a statue sixty feet high, all of solid bronze, and a very old one it is, too."
TWO:Yes; and it was true before you were born or thought of, continued this terrible old lady. Your father didnt marry so much beneath him either. Ah, he was in a precious small way, he was, when he came a-courting your mother."The wrestlers were the largest men I have seen in Japan; and the fact is I didn't suppose the country contained any men so large. As near as I could see, they had more fat than muscle on them; but there must have been a good deal of muscle, too, for they were strong as oxen. Doctor Bronson says he has seen some of these wrestlers carry two sacks of rice weighing a hundred and twenty-five pounds each, and that one man carried a sack with his teeth, while another took one under his arm and turned somersets with it, and did not once lose his hold. The Doctor says these men are a particular race of Japanese, and it used to be the custom for each prince to have a dozen or more of these wrestlers in his suite to furnish amusement for himself and his friends. Sometimes two princes would get up a match with their wrestlers, just as men in New York get up matches between dogs and chickens. Then there were troupes of wrestlers, who went around giving exhibitions, just as they sometimes do in America. But you never saw such fat men in all your life as they were; not fat in one place, like the man that keeps the grocery on[Pg 230] the corner of the public square in our town, but fat all over. I felt the back and arms of one of them, and his muscles were as hard as iron. The flesh on his breast was soft, and seemed like a thick cushion of fat. I think you might have hit him there with a mallet without hurting him much.
THREE:Swiftly and jubilantly he crossed the road: at the sight of that lit blind all the awakening pangs of his heart had passed from him, even as at the sight of the nodding daffodils had passed the apathy that encompassed it before. His intolerance of his wife, the dreaminess of his purposeless existence ceased to be: on the other hand his secret garden, now that the gardener who had made it sacred was waiting for him, bloomed again in an everlasting spring. In answer to his ring, which he heard faintly tinkling inside, there came steps on the stairs, and the dark fan-light over the door leaped into brightness, as some one turned on the switch. Then the door opened, and, as he had expected, there was Charles.STROLLING SINGERS AT ASAKUSA. STROLLING SINGERS AT ASAKUSA.
