knowledge; a student of antiquity, to whom the records of the geologist are modern pages in the great volume of being, and the pyramids a memorandum of yesterday, as the eclipse or occultation that is to take place thousands of years hence is an event of to-morrow in the diary without beginning and without end where he enters the aspect of the passing moment as it is read on the celestial dial.
In very marked contrast with this young man is the something more than middle-aged Register of Deeds, a rusty, sallow, smoke-dried looking personage, who belongs to this earth as exclusively as the other belongs to the firmament. His movements are as mechanical as those of a pendulum,—to the office, where he changes his coat and plunges into messuages and building-lots; then, after changing his coat again, back to our table, and so, day by day, the dust of years gradually gathering around him as it does on the old folios that fill the shelves all round the great cemetery of past transactions of which he is the sexton.
Of the Salesman who sits next him, nothing need be said except that he is good-looking, rosy, well-dressed, and of very polite manners, only a little more brisk than the approved style of carriage permits, as one in the habit of springing with a certain alacrity at the call of a customer.
You would like to see, I don't doubt, how we sit at the table, and I will help you by means of a diagram which shows the present arrangement of our seats.
4 3 2 1 14 13 ————————————————- | O O O O O O | | | 5 | O Breakfast-Table O |12 | | | O O O O O O | ————————————————- 6 7 8 9 10 11 1. The Poet. 2. The Master Of Arts. 3. The Young Girl (Scheherezade). 4. The Lady. 5. The Landlady. 6. Dr. B. Franklin. 7. That Boy. 8. The Astronomer. 9. The Member of the Haouse. 10. The Register of Deeds. 11. The Salesman. 12. The Capitalist. 13. The Man of Letters(?). 14. The Scarabee.
Our young Scheherezade varies her prose stories now and then, as I
Prev.
Back
Top