Wang the Ninth

ng of his hammer sounded far into the night, and the child fell asleep to that jarring music just as he often awoke to it. The steady pant of the bellows-worked by a small boy

in his fingers as his father often did: if you are quick th

ere food at home; there was plenty to be picked up along every foot of the stretch of highway leading to the frowning battleme

out of the capital. When their baskets were sold out, it was always he whom they allowed to pick up the morsels from the bottoms u

sooner or later coins which had been dropped by country bumpkins, coming out of the city the worse for their holiday-making, would be brought to light. He soon evolved a

open admiration for everything he did: he learnt so fast every lesson from the great Book of Life spr

ch rats with his bare hands, and how to approach vicious camels, who if you are not careful can display a savagery terrifying to all but their drivers. As for birds he had the s

ges or tasselled sticks, with their birds lightly tied to them, came out of the city with their pets, and there were great competitions with an amazing rivalry aroused, particularly in singing and grain-catching. Hooded falcons, with their

e-sliding on a frozen pool in which he soon excelled. Summer, with its blinding sunlight, allowed him to run naked and discover teeming life in every stagnant pond. He knew that the first thunder-storm would magically turn

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lull himself to sleep by his music; and waking up

half-asleep between the humps of his beast to the ground frantic with rage at the insults hurled at him for no reason at all by his

o words to upbraid his wife for her base desertion of him years ago. A sort of family loyalty and pride forbade the boy from mentioning this to any one, although the neighbourhood knew all about it. Indeed he would fight any one who brough

d seen a score of men publicly executed by a man in a red coat with a huge sword, and had watched with strangely staring eyes the stricken heads roll in the dust. Everything that happened was to him a phenomenon demanding inquiry; and on each and everything he bestowed the flexible methods of the empiricist, thereby gaining in natural wisdom. He insulted the schoolboys going to school with their school-books under

passers-by which henceforth made h

that there might be s