ONE:Not many years ago, China and Japan were regarded as among the barbarous nations. The rest of the world knew comparatively little about their peoples, and, on the other hand, the inhabitants of those countries had only a slight knowledge of Europe and America. To-day the situation is greatly changed; China and Japan are holding intimate relations with us and with Europe, and there is every prospect that the acquaintance between the East and the West will increase as the years roll on. There is a general desire for information concerning the people of the Far East, and it is especially strong among the youths of America.
ONE:"'Where away?' shouted the first mate.
ONE:Dimly, like the moving of an unborn child, the sense of beauty, that profitless thing, without which there is no profit in all the concerns of the world, began to trouble Keeling with a livelier indication of life than any that he had yet experienced from it. In some disconnected way it was connected with Johns education and Lord Inverbrooms manner, and the denizens of the windows of the County Club as opposed to those who more numerously gathered in the windows of the Town Club next door. Propert, his salesman in the book department, had a cousinship to these men who made gargoyles and beautiful books, whereas Emmeline was only cousin to the pilasters in the Town Hall and the No. 1 drawing-room suite. Properts sister, according to her brothers account, had the same type of relationship as himself. But the main point about her was her swiftness in shorthand writing and the accuracy of her transcription on to the typewriting machine. Keeling had never had a secretary who finished a heavy days work in so short a time. He owed her the extra half-hours leisure, which had led{86} to this appreciation of the gargoyles and buttresses of the Cathedral. For thirty years he had passed this way almost daily, but until to-day he had never seen them before in the sense that seeing means a digestion of sight.
