The sun of that same day going down,
Dusk was saluted by an instantaneous sparkle of electric lights.
Dinner and bedtime were always difficult to kill,
The night after the dance further tarnished by the peevishness of dissipation
There were no letters for either of the two young men.
As every other person, practically, had received two or three plump letters from England,
Which they were now engaged in reading.
The animals had been fed. Their silence reminded him of the silence in the lion-house,
When each beast holds a lump of raw meant its paws
Some, hippopotamuses
Some, canary birds
Some, swine
Some, parrots
And some, loathsome reptiles curled round the half-decayed bodies of sheep
The intermittent sounds—now a cough, horrible wheezing or throat clearing were just, he declared,
What you hear if you stand in the lion-house when the bones are being mauled
He fixed his attention more closely upon his fellow-creatures.
He was too far from them, however, to hear what they were saying,
But it pleased him to construct little theories about them from their gestures and appearance.