ONE:"Pekin stands on a great sandy plain, and has a population of about two millions. It consists of two parts, which are separated by a wall; that towards the south is called the Chinese city, and that on the north the Tartar city. The Tartar city is the smaller both in area and population; it is said to measure about twelve square miles, while the Chinese city measures fifteen. There are thirteen gates in the outer walls, and there are three gates between the Tartar and the Chinese city. In front of each gate there is a sort of bastion or screen, so that you cannot see the entrance at all as you approach it, and are obliged to turn to one side to come in or go out. The Chinese city has few public buildings of importance, while the Tartar city has a great many of them. The latter city consists of three enclosures, one inside the other, and each enclosure has a wall of its own. The outer one contains dwellings and shops, the second includes the government offices, and the houses of private persons who are allowed to live there as a mark of special favor; while the third is called the Prohibited City, and is devoted to the imperial palace and temples that belong to it. Nobody can go inside the Prohibited City without special permission, and sometimes this is very hard to obtain; the wall enclosing it is nearly two miles in circumference, and has a gate in each of its four fronts, and the wall is as solid and high as the one that surrounds the whole city of Pekin."It was not until the fifty-ninth century," continued the Clockwork man, speaking with a just perceptible click, "that man became a conjurer in real life. We have here an instance of the complete turning over of human ideas. Ancient man conjured for amusement; modern man conjures as a matter of course. Since the[Pg 99] invention of the clock and all that its action implies, including the discovery of at least three new dimensions, or fields of action, man's simplest act of an utilitarian nature may be regarded as a sort of conjuring trick. Certainly our forefathers, if they could see us as we are now constituted, would regard them as such"
TWO:There was mingled chagrin and pleasure for him in this speech. He admired the frank friendliness with which she spoke: but he would have liked to have seen in her some consciousness of the underlying truth which last night he had hugged to himself. But in her frankness there seemed to be a complete unconsciousness of any of his own sentiments, no twitter, however remote, of the bird of romance that had sung to him from the snowy trees.
