The Lost Art of Reading

by Gerald Stanley Lee

The First Interference:
Civilisation

I
Dust

“I see the ships,” said The Eavesdropper, as he stole round the world to me, “on a dozen sides of the world. I hear them fighting with the sea.”

“And what do you see on the ships?” I said.

“Figures of men and women—thousands of figures of men and women.”

“And what are they doing?”

“They are walking fiercely,” he said,—“some of them,—walking fiercely up and down the decks before the sea.”

“Why?” said I.

“Because they cannot stand still and look at it. Others are reading in chairs because they cannot sit still and look at it.”