ONE:They were facing one another now. The doctor swallowed hard several times, and he felt the blood tingling in his temples. The dreaded moment had come. He had got to see this strange instrument that distinguished the Clockwork man from ordinary mortals. There was no shrinking from the eerie experience. Underneath that borrowed hat and wig there was somethingsomething utterly strange and outside the pale of human ingenuity. In the name of common humanity it was incumbent upon the Doctor to face the shock of this revelation, and yet he shrunk from it like a frightened child. He felt no[Pg 160] trace of curiosity, no feverish anxiety to investigate this mystery of the future. His knees trembled violently. He did not want to see the clock. He would have given a hundred pounds to be spared the ordeal before him.
TWO:Perhaps you would tell me something about him, he said.
FORE:Fred agreed with him, and then added, "I tell you what, Frank, we'll get three dresses just like those, if they don't cost too much; and when we get home, we'll have Miss Effie and your sister and my sister put them on. Then we'll arrange the garden to look like that one as much as possible, with a little furnace and teapot in front of the girls, and the pedestal of a statue near them. Won't that be nice?""One of the curious places we saw was the Hall of Examinations. This is a large enclosed space, having rows on rows of little cells, where the candidates for the literary degree are examined once in every three years. There are eleven thousand of these cells, and each cell is just large enough for one man to occupy. The candidates are put in these cells, and each man is furnished with a sheet of paper and a pen. He must write on the paper any given page of the Chinese books called 'The Classics' without mistake or alteration, and he is not allowed to try a second time until the next examination comes round. There are men who keep on trying all their lives for the degree, and they tell of one man who succeeded after he was eighty years old. The candidates try all sorts of tricks to smuggle in copies of the books on which they are to be examined, and also extra sheets of paper; but they are carefully searched, and everything of the sort is taken away from them.
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