At any rate they
assimilated, they kept the tongue. The shipping in the lower
reaches below the Tower there carried the flags of every country
under the sky. . . . As he went along the riverside he met a group
of dusky students, Chinese or Japanese. Cambridge had abounded in
Indians; and beneath that tall clock tower at Westminster it seemed
as though the world might centre. The background of the
Englishman's world reached indeed to either pole, it went about the
earth, his background it was--for all that he was capable of doing.
All this had awaited him. . . .
Is it any wonder if a young man with an excitable imagination came
at times to the pitch of audible threats? If the extreme indulgence
of his opportunity and his sense of ability and vigour lifted his
vanity at moments to the kingly pitch? If he ejaculated and made a
gesture or so as he went along the Embankment?
5
In the disquisition upon choice that opened Benham's paper on
ARISTOCRACY, he showed himself momentarily wiser than his day-
dreams. For in these day-dreams he did seem to himself to be
choosing among unlimited possibilities.
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