ONE:"Oh dear, it is trying. It really is most dreadfully trying"
TWO:"The Chinese have a great many gods, and pretty nearly every god has a temple in some part of Pekin. There is a fine temple to Confucius, which is surrounded by some trees that are said to be five hundred years old; the temple has a high roof which is very elaborately carved, and looks pretty both from a distance and when you are close by it. But there are no statues in the temple, as the Chinese do not worship Confucius through a statue, but by means of a tablet on which his name is inscribed. The other deities have their statues, and you may see the god of war with a long beard and mustache. The Chinese have very slight beards, and it is perhaps for this reason that they frequently represent their divinities as having a great deal of hair on their faces, so as to indicate their superiority to mortals. Then they have a god of literature, who is represented standing on the head of a large fish, and waving a pencil in his right hand, while he holds in his left a cap such as is worn by the literary graduates after they have received their degrees.[Pg 368] The god of literature is worshipped a great deal by everybody who is studying for a degree, and by those whose ancestors or other relatives have been successful in carrying away the honors at an examination. Think what it would be to have such a divinity in our colleges and schools[Pg 369] in America, and the amount of worship he would get if the students really believed in him!Not far from the entrance of the temple Frank came upon a stone wheel set in a post of the same material. He looked it over with the greatest care, and wondered what kind of labor-saving machine it was. A quantity of letters and figures on the sides of the post increased his thirst for knowledge, and he longed to be able to read Japanese, so that he might know the name of the inventor of this piece of mechanism, and what it was made for.
ONE:
TWO:Allingham had an explanation for everything. He said that the loud noise was due to some kind of machine that this ingenious lunatic carried in his pocket. He argued that the rapid flight was probably to be accounted for by a sort of electric shoe. Nothing was impossible so long as you could adduce some explanation that was just humanly credible. And the strange antics of the Clockwork man, his sudden stoppings and beginnings, his[Pg 44] "Anglo-Saxon" gestures and his staccato gait, all came under the heading of locomotor ataxia in an advanced form.
ONE:THE CLOCK"They squeeze the ankles in much the same way, by making the man kneel on the ground, with his ankles in a frame of three sticks that are fastened together at one end by a cord like that of the finger-squeezer. Then, when all is ready, they pull at the cord and draw the sticks nearer to each other, so that pressure is brought on the ankles. The pain is intense, and the most demure Chinaman is not able to stand it without shrinking. This mode of torture, like the other, is used to make prisoners confess the crimes of which they are accused, and they generally confess them. It is said that witnesses may be subjected to the ankle torture, but with the modification in their favor that only one ankle can be squeezed at a time. Very kind, isn't it?
TWO:[Pg 211]
