I have made life a parallelogram, I see, though it is notoriously a circle; and I have symbolized failure in life by carroming on the light and dark reds; whereas, as we all know, that is success in billiards. But, my Ah Yung Whack, is it not night in China when it is day with us? And does not white raiment signify grief there? And do they not take off their shoes instead of their hats when calling on a friend, and shake their own hands rather than the other fellow’s? We will let the illustration stand, my boy, for your sake; for, in the new Flowery Kingdom which is coming, all things will be changed. In that day, when the wielder of the cue shall also wear one (spell it how he will), the game will be to miss rather than to hit; so that what seemed, at the first blush, to be due to the buck-jumping of a mustang Pegasus, turns out to be, in reality, the prophetic vision of a philosophic Bushwhacker.
But the environment of Mary?
And now, at last, it has come,—that chapter which I have so long dreaded,—my chapter on Virginia theology.
“Dearest Alice, could you not manage it for me?”
A backward toss in her rocking-chair, one ejaculatory clapping together of her plump hands, one shout of laughing amazement was her answer.
“I?” said Charley. “You must have forgotten that I am hard at work on that Essay on Military Glory which you say you will shortly need.”
| [1] | Conspicuously inexact; but the reader must judge for herself.—Ed. |
CHAPTER LVII.
Here I am, then, since it must be.