FORE:"Didn't you intend to call, too?" "No," he said; yet the moment the operator turned the key in his door we sauntered away from the station, tavern, town, and out into the rain-famished country. We chose a road on high ground, under pines; the fact that a few miles of it would bring us to Squire Wall's was not sufficient reason for us to shun it, and we loitered on and on, discoursing philosophically on man and woman and the duties of each to other. Through habit we went softly, and so, in time, came up past a small garden under the house's southern side. Here silence was only decorum, for every window in the dark upper rooms was thrown open to the sultry air. The house's front was away from the direction of the town, and at a corner of this garden, where the road entered the open grove, the garden fence turned north at a right angle, while the road went on through the grove into wide cornfields beyond.
FORE:"We stopped at the village of Sha-ho, about twenty miles from Pekin; and as we had started a little late, and it was near sunset, we concluded to spend the night there. There was not much to see at the village, except a[Pg 382] couple of fine old bridges built of stone, and so solid that they will evidently last a long time. A barber came around and wanted to shave us, but for several reasons we declined his proposal, and satisfied ourselves by seeing him operate on a native customer. The Chinese razor is a piece of steel of a three-cornered shape, and is fastened to a handle about four inches long. It is kept very sharp, as any well-regulated razor should be, and a barber will handle it with a great deal of dexterity. The Chinese haven't much beard to shave off, but they make up for it with a very thick growth of hair, which is all removed every ten or twelve days, with the exception of a spot on the crown about four inches in diameter. The hair on this spot is allowed to grow as long as it will, and is then braided into the cue or pigtail that everybody knows about.She retreated towards the door.
FORE:Near the gateway was a pagoda or tower in seven stories, and it is said to be one of the finest in Japan. The Japanese pagoda is always built in an odd number of stories, three, five, seven, or nine, and it usually terminates, as does the one we are now contemplating, with a spire that resembles an enormous corkscrew more than anything else. It is of copper or bronze, and is a very beautiful ornament, quite in keeping with the edifice that it crowns. On its pinnacle there is a jewel, or something supposed to be one, a sacred emblem that appears very frequently in Japanese paintings or bronze-work. The edges of the little roofs projecting from each story were hung with bells that rang in the wind, but their noise was not sufficiently loud to render any inconvenience to the visitor, and for the greater part of the time they do not ring at all. The architecture of the pagoda is in keeping with that of the surrounding buildings, and thoroughly Oriental in all its features.That last fact occupied a central place in his mind just at present, but it was also another source of irritation. Lilian was intellectual as well as fascinating, and the former attribute became more marked as they grew more intimate. Instead of charming little notes inviting him to tea he now received long, and, he was obliged to admit, quite excellent essays upon the true place of woman in modern life. He was bound to applaud, but such activity of mind was by no means to his taste. He liked[Pg 47] a woman to have thoughts; but a thinking woman was a nuisance.
FORE:On my way back through camp with Gholson I saw old Dismukes. He called me to him, quit his cards, and led me into his tent. There, very beguilingly, he questioned me at much length, evidently seeking to draw from the web of my replies the thread of Ferry's and Charlotte's story; and as I saw that he believed in both of them with all his brutal might, I let him win a certain success. "Head laid wide open!" he said gleefully, and boiled over with happy blasphemings.
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