Luckily there is another cant to the questy. Has any fellow, of | 1 |
the dime a dozen type, it might with some profit some dull even- | 2 |
ing quietly be hinted | 3 |
chested fortyish, faintly flatulent and given to ratiocination by | 4 |
syncopation in the elucidation of complications,of his greatest | 5 |
Fung Yang dynasdescendanced,only another the son of, in fact, | 6 |
ever looked sufficiently longly at a quite everydaylooking stamped | 7 |
addressed envelope? Admittedly it is an outer husk: its face, in | 8 |
all its featureful perfection of imperfection, is its fortune: it ex- | 9 |
hibits only the civil or military clothing of whatever passion- | 10 |
pallid nudity or plaguepurple nakedness may happen to tuck it- | 11 |
self under its flap. Yet to concentrate solely on the literal sense or | 12 |
even the psychological content of any document to the sore | 13 |
neglect of the enveloping facts themselves circumstantiating it is | 14 |
just as hurtful to sound sense (and let it be added to the truest | 15 |
taste) as were some fellow in the act of perhaps getting an intro | 16 |
from another fellow turning out to be a friend in need of his, say, | 17 |
to a lady of the latter's acquaintance, engaged in performing the | 18 |
elaborative antecistral ceremony of upstheres, straightaway to run | 19 |
off and vision her plump and plain in her natural altogether, pre- | 20 |
ferring to close his blinkhard's eyes to the ethiquethical fact that | 21 |
she was, after all, wearing for the space of the time being some | 22 |
definite articles of evolutionary clothing, inharmonious creations, | 23 |
a captious critic might describe them as, or not strictly necessary | 24 |
or a trifle irritating here and there, but for all that suddenly full | 25 |
of local colour and personal perfume and suggestive, too, of so | 26 |
very much more and capable of being stretched, filled out, if need | 27 |
or wish were, of having their surprisingly like coincidental parts | 28 |
separated don't they now, for better survey by the deft hand of | 29 |
an expert, don't you know? Who in his heart doubts either that | 30 |
the facts of feminine clothiering are there all the time or that the | 31 |
feminine fiction, stranger than the facts, is there also at the same | 32 |
time, only a little to the rere? Or that one may be separated from | 33 |
the other? Or that both may then be contemplated simultaneously? | 34 |
Or that each may be taken up and considered in turn apart from | 35 |
the other? | 36 |