THREE:
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THREE:"None," said the Clockwork man, and the word was boomed out on a hollow, brassy note. "We are made, you see. For us creation is finished. We can only improve ourselves very slowly, but we shall never quite escape the body of this death. We've only ourselves to blame. The makers gave us our chance. They are beings of infinite patience and forbearance. But they saw that we were determined to go on as we were, and so they devised this means of giving us our wish.[Pg 210] You see, Life was a Vale of Tears, and men grew tired of the long journey. The makers said that if we persevered we should come to the end and know joys earth has not seen. But we could not wait, and we lost faith. It seemed to us that if we could do away with death and disease, with change and decay, then all our troubles would be over. So they did that for us, and we've stopped the same as we were, except that time and space no longer hinder us."Mary's list included some carvings in ivory and some lacquered boxes to keep her gloves in. These were not at all difficult to find, as they were everywhere in the shops, and it would have been much harder to avoid them if he had wanted to do so. There were chessmen of ivory, and representations of the divinities of the country; and then there were little statues of the kings and high dignitaries from ancient times down to the present. As it was a matter of some perplexity, Frank sought the advice of Doctor Bronson; the latter told him it would be just as well to restrain himself in the purchase of ivory carvings, as there was better work of the kind in China, and a few samples of the products of Japan would[Pg 248] be sufficient. Frank acted upon this hint, and did not make any extensive investments in Japanese ivory. He found a great variety of what the Japanese call "nitschkis," which are small pieces of ivory carved in various shapes more or less fanciful. They were pretty, and had the merit of not being at all dear; and as they would make nice little souvenirs of Japan, he bought a good many of them. They are intended as ornaments to be worn at a gentleman's girdle, and in the olden times no gentleman considered his dress complete without one or more of these at his waist, just as most of the fashionable youths of America think that a scarf-pin is necessary to make life endurable. A large number of carvers made a living by working in ivory, and they displayed a wonderful amount of patience in completing their designs. One of these little carvings with which Frank was fascinated was a representation of a man mounting a horse with the assistance of a groom, who was holding the animal. The piece was less than two inches in length, and yet the carver had managed to put in this contracted space the figures of two men and a horse, with the dress of the men and the trappings of the horse as carefully shown as in a painting. There[Pg 249] was a hole in the pedestal on which the group stood, and Frank found, on inquiry, that this hole was intended for the passage of a cord to attach the ornament to the waist of the wearer. And then he observed that all the carvings had a similar provision for rendering them useful.
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THREE:Mr Silverdale will be so sorry, she said. He drops in there sometimes for a rubber of bridge, for he thinks that it is such a good thing to show that a clergyman can be a man of the world too.
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THREE:The next morning a carriage containing Doctor Bronson and his nephew, Fred, drove up in front of Mr. Bassett's house. There were farewell kisses, and hopes for a prosperous journey; and in a few minutes the three travellers were on their way to the railway station. There was a waving of handkerchiefs as the carriage started from the house and rolled away; Nero barked and looked wistfully after his young master, and the warm-hearted Kathleen wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron, and flung an old shoe after the departing vehicle.
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THREE:"Captain Hunting, of New Bedford, had the worst fight that I know of, while he was on a cruise in the South Atlantic. When he struck the fellowit was a tough old bull that had been through fights before, I reckonthe whale didn't try to escape, but turned on the boat, bit her in two, and kept on thrashing the wreck till he broke it up completely. Another boat picked up the men and took them to the ship, and then two other boats went in on him. Each of them got in two irons, and that made him mad; he turned around and chewed those boats, and he stuck closely to business until there wasn't a mouthful left. The twelve swimmers[Pg 67] were picked up by the boat which had taken the first lot to the ship; two of the men had climbed on his back, and he didn't seem to mind them. He kept on chewing away at the oars, sails, masts, planks, and other fragments of the boats; and whenever anything touched his body, he turned and munched away at it. There he was with six harpoons in him, and each harpoon had three hundred fathoms of line attached to it. Captain Hunting got out two spare boats, and started with them and the saved boat to renew the fight. He got alongside and sent a bomb-lance charged with six inches of powder right into the whale's vitals, just back of his fin. When the lance was fired, he turned and tore through the boat like a hurricane, scattering everything. The sun was setting, four boats were gone with all their gear and twelve hundred fathoms of line, the spare boats were poorly provided, the men were wearied and discouraged, and Captain Hunting hauled off and admitted himself beaten by a whale."
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THREE:"Just after the curtain was pulled away, they opened a door in the middle of the garden, and the actors who were to be in the play came in. They sat down on the stage and began a song, which they kept up for ten or fifteen minutes, each of them singing a part that was evidently prepared for himself alone. The music in the little boxes joined them, and it made me think of the negro minstrels in a concert hall at home, where they all come on together. After they finished this part of the performance, there was a pantomime by a woman, or rather by a man disguised as a woman, as all the acting is done by men. They get themselves up perfectly, as they have very little beards, and they can imitate the voice and movements of a woman, so that nobody can tell the difference. I couldn't tell what the pantomime was all about, and it was so long that I got tired of it before they were through, and wondered when they would come on with something else.I looked carefully at my companion and asked him if the Major had said all of that. He had, and Gholson's hide had turned it without taking a scratch. "That's fine!--as to Ferry," I said.
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