ONE:"One of the curious places we saw was the Hall of Examinations. This is a large enclosed space, having rows on rows of little cells, where the candidates for the literary degree are examined once in every three years. There are eleven thousand of these cells, and each cell is just large enough for one man to occupy. The candidates are put in these cells, and each man is furnished with a sheet of paper and a pen. He must write on the paper any given page of the Chinese books called 'The Classics' without mistake or alteration, and he is not allowed to try a second time until the next examination comes round. There are men who keep on trying all their lives for the degree, and they tell of one man who succeeded after he was eighty years old. The candidates try all sorts of tricks to smuggle in copies of the books on which they are to be examined, and also extra sheets of paper; but they are carefully searched, and everything of the sort is taken away from them.
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ONE:We left the table all laughing but Gholson. He tried to say something to Harry, which the latter waved away with mock gaiety until on the side veranda we got beyond view of the ladies, when the aide-de-camp reddened angrily and turned his back. As the two lieutenants were lighting cigarettes together, Harry, thinking Gholson had left us, blurted out, "Oh, that's all very well for you to say, Ned, but, damn him, he's not the sort of man that has the right to 'suspicion' me of anything; slang-whanging, backbiting sneak, I know what he's here for."
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ONE:"Precisely. And because you have seen[Pg 179] more than I have you are less able to understand the matter than I am. You cannot see the wood for the trees. Again, you were frightened out of your life. Your scientific instincts were stampeded. You saw only a hideous malformation, a neural freak, a preposterous human machine. It was inconceivable that you should have been able to think clearly under the circumstances. Consider the matter in the sober aftermath of reason, and you must agree with me that it is really not more extraordinary that a man should function by mechanical means than that he should function at all."To tell all that was done and seen by our young friends during their stay in Kioto would be to tell a great deal. They had their time fully occupied from their arrival to their departure, and they regretted much the necessity of leaving when they did. At the Doctor's suggestion, they attempted a new system of relating their adventures to their friends at home, and were so well pleased at the result that they determined to try it again. The new scheme was the preparation of a letter in which both had equal shares, Frank undertaking to write one half of it and Fred the other. They succeeded so well that when they read over their production to Doctor Bronson before sending it away, he was unable to say which was Fred's portion and which was Frank's. We will reproduce the letter and leave our readers to judge how well they performed their self-imposed duty. At the Doctor's suggestion, each of the boys wrote as though speaking for himself, and consequently the letter had a good deal of "I" in it.
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