CHAPTER III.It is not too much to say that the room was of the nature of a temple, for here a very essential and withdrawn part of himself passed hours of praise and worship. Born in the humblest circumstances, he had, from the days when he slept on a piece of sacking below the counter in his fathers most unprofitable shop, devoted all the push, all the activity of his energies to the grappling of business problems and the pursuit of money-making. To many this becomes by the period of{33} middle age a passion not less incurable than drug drinking, and not less ruinous than that to the nobler appetites of life. But Keeling had never allowed it thus to usurp and swamp him; he always had guarded his secret garden, fencing it impenetrably off from the clatter of the till. Here, though undeveloped and sundered from the rest of his life, grew the rose of romance, namely the sense of beauty in books; here shone for him the light which never was on sea or land, which inspires every artists dream. He was not in any degree creative, he had not the desire any more than the skill to write or to draw when he lost himself in reverie over the printed page or the illustrations in his sumptuous editions. But the sense of wonder and admiration which is the oil in the artists lamp burned steadily for him, and lit with a never-flickering flame the hours he passed among his books. Above all, when he was here he lost completely a certain sense of loneliness which was his constant companion.
FORE:"Well, what is it?""Well, as I was coming along I see something moving about just at the top of the pit. At first I thought it was a dog, but when I come nearer I could see it was a pair of legs, kicking. Only they was going so fast you couldn't hardly tell one from t'other. Well, I[Pg 59] ran up, thinking 'as very likely someone 'ad fallen in, and sure enough it was someone. I caught 'old of the legs, and just as I was about to pull 'im out"
Before the steamer stopped she was surrounded by dozens of the smaller boats, and, as soon as they could do so, many of the boatwomen came on board. The captain recommended one of them who was known as "American Susan," and the trio were confided to her care for transfer to the hotel on Ho-nan Island. Susan and her attendant women shouldered the valises which the travellers had brought from Hong-kong, and led the way to her boat. The gallantry of the boys received a shock when they saw their baggage carried by women, while their own hands were empty; but the Doctor told them it was the custom of the country, and by carrying their own valises they would deprive the women of an opportunity of earning a few pennies. To this view of the matter they yielded; and before they had recovered their composure the boat was gliding across the river, propelled by the powerful arms of her feminine crew. Susan proposed to be in their employ during their stay at Canton, and a bargain was speedily concluded; for fifty cents at day, the boat was to be at their disposal from morning till night to carry them over the river, or to any point they wished to visit along its banks. Frank thought they would be obliged to look a long time to find a boat with two men at the oars for a similar price in New York, and Fred thought they would have to look still longer to find one rowed by two women.OVERLAND BY RAIL IN A PULLMAN CAR. OVERLAND BY RAIL IN A PULLMAN CAR.