tion>
Samuel Merwin
Anthony the Absolute
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066136666
Table of Contents
Yokohama, Grand Hotel, March 20th.
Grand Hotel, Yokohama, March 30th, Early Afternoon.
On the Railway, Coasting the Island Sea—March 31st.
Hôtel de Chine, Peking, April 5th—or 6th.
Grand Hôtel des Wagon-lits. April 17th. Later.
April 18th. Morning. (At the Wagon-lits) .
Late Afternoon. (still the 18th.)
On the Steamer, “Hsing Mien,”, Yangtze River. May 1st.
At Sea—March 28th.
THIS evening I told Sir Robert What's-His-Name he was a fool.
I was quite right in this. He is.
Every evening since the ship left Vancouver he has presided over the round table in the middle of the smoking-room. There he sips his coffee and liqueur, and holds forth on every subject known to the mind of man. Each subject is his subject. He is an elderly person, with a bad face and a drooping left eyelid. He wears a monocle; and carries his handkerchief in his left sleeve.
They tell me that he is in the British Service—a judge somewhere down in Malaysia, where they drink more than is good for them. I believe it. He tosses about his obiter dicta as if he were pope of the human intellect. A garrulous pope. Surely the mind of a judge, when exposed, is a dreadful thing!
Go where I will, of an evening, there is no peace for me. In the “social hall” some ungoverned young thing is eternally at the piano—“On the Mississippi” and “The Robert E. Lee” and the other musical literature of the turkey trot. I could not possibly sit five minutes there without shrieking. Outside, on deck, it has been raw and chill for a week, with rain penetrating my clothing and misting the lenses of my spectacles and rousing my slumbering rheumatism. And you can not sit long in a stuffy cabin, with the port screwed fast; it is unpleasant enough sleeping there. … So I have huddled myself each night in a corner of the smoking-room. I have played at dominoes. I have played at solitaire with cards. And I loathe games! But anything is a relief that will divert my mind, even for an instant now and then, from thoughts of that loose, throaty voice, and of the truly awful mind that animates it.
Few of the passengers ever give me more than a nod; for I am not what is called a “mixer.” Except the Port Watch. He has looked confidingly at me twice over his siphon. But I have not encouraged him, for he has an over-intense eye and the flush of drink is on his cheek. Every day, hours on end, he paces the deck; hence his nickname. He is, like myself, a lonely man; and a little wild—distinctly a little wild.
Sir Robert outdid himself this evening. No man could possibly know so much. I have made a list (not complete, of course) of the subjects on which he speaks with dogmatic authority—very positive, very technical, with a glib use of catch phrases, with emphasis always on the peculiarly significant point in the matter. The list runs:
Aëronautics; the American