Langford bowed his acknowledgement in a courtly manner, as Sir Henry Irving might have done before a royal audience.
Some of the maudlin white men shouted for an encore.
Nothing loth, Jim laughingly consented, and a hush 134 went over the crowd again, for there was a peculiar hypnotism coming from this erratic individual that commanded the attention of all his listeners.
A little, old, monkey-faced Chinaman, carrying a parcel in his hand, was standing close by. Langford caught hold of him gently and stood the bashful individual before him. In paternal fashion he placed his hand on the greasy, grey head and started impressively into the farewell exhortation of Polonius to Lærtes, out of Hamlet:
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“And these few precepts in thy memory. Look thou to character. Give thy thoughts no tongue Nor any unproportion’d thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar”... |
On he recited, oblivious of all but the charm of the words he uttered, careful lest a single phrase might pass his lips without its due measure of expression. He finished in a whisper; his voice full of emotion and tears glistening in his deep-set eyes, much to the amazement of the monkey-face upturned to him.
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“This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” |
Deep silence followed, until the squeaky voice of little monkey-face broke through:––
“Ya,––you bet,––me savvy!”
It shattered the spell that was on Langford. He laughed, and grabbed the parcel from the hand of the little Chinaman. He pulled the string from it and the paper wrappings, exposing a bloody ox-heart which was destined never to fulfil the purpose for which it was bought.