`I enjoyed that afternoon I spent there,¨ she said. `They are kind, they are simple, and it is only simple people who count. I wonder if Lord Inverbroom gave the wing himself.¨ Frank lingered behind, and the rest of the dialogue has not been recorded. "Please, Doctor," said Frank, "what is the nature of the notices they put on the sign-board?" The party reached Shanghai without accident, and on their arrival at that port the boys had a welcome surprise in the shape of letters from home. Their first letters from Japan had been received, and read and reread by family and friends. To judge by the words of praise that they elicited, the efforts of the youths at descriptive composition were eminently successful. Frank's mother said that if they did as well all through their journey as they had done in the beginning, they would be qualified to write a book about Japan and China; and a similar opinion of their powers was drawn from Fred's mother, who took great pride in her son. Mary and Effie composed a joint letter to Frank, to tell how much pleasure he had given them. They were somewhat anxious about the purchases, but were entirely sure everything would be correct in the end. Fred began to be a trifle jealous of Frank when he saw how much the latter enjoyed the communication from the girl who came to the railway station to see them off. He vowed to himself that before he started on another journey he would make the acquaintance of another Effie, so that he would have some one to exchange letters with. Fred admitted the force of the argument, but thought there would be an advantage in writing while the subject was fresh in their minds. While they were debating the pros and cons of the case, the Doctor came into the room, and the question was appealed to him. After careful deliberation, he rendered a decision that covered the case to the perfect satisfaction of both the disputants. A LITERARY STUDENT. A LITERARY STUDENT. She threw my hand from her. "I know I do! I'm so unworthy to do it that I wouldn't have believed I could. You thought I was Charlotte Oliver--Heavens! boy, if you should breathe the atmosphere Charlotte Oliver has to live in! But understand again, for your soul's comfort, you haven't tempted me. Go, if you must; go, take your chances; and if you're spared ever to see your dear, dear little mother--" "I think you must have taught her," I responded, and he enjoyed his inability to deny it. So I ventured farther and said she seemed to me actually to have reached, in the few days since I had first seen her, a finer spiritual stature. The little man with the keen restless eyes and the pince-nez did not suggest the popular idea of the novelist. He chattered on with frank egotism. The world made much of him, and he took it for granted that all the world was interested in his work. And he was talking eagerly to Leona Lalage about the Corner House. "Worth stealing," a Society journalist lounging by remarked. "I could write a novel, only I can never think of a plot. Your old housekeeper is asleep long ago. Where do you carry your latchkey?"
Bruce shook his head. Hetty shook her finger at him disapprovingly. The woman reached up a long white hand, and taking the bulb of the swinging electric light in her grasp desperately, crushed it to pieces. Then there was swift darkness again and the rush of flying feet. "Why should I deny it?" Leona said boldly. "My husband was murdered. He was slain by Dr. Gordon Bruce for the sake of his money." "A German officer came nearer, and, uncovering his head, said in a voice trembling with emotion: 'General, what you performed is admirable!' Evidently these words slightly comforted the defender of Li┬ge, who before long was removed by motor-car to an ambulance in the town." When I reported the occurrence in De Tijd, I was fully conscious of the frightful accusation implied by my information; but I am prepared to confirm with the most sacred oaths that nothing in this accusation is untrue or exaggerated. We have not here to examine the scientific achievements of Pythagoras and his school; they belong to the history of science, not to that of pure thought, and therefore lie outside the present discussion. Something, however, must be said of Pythagoreanism as a scheme of moral, religious, and social reform. Alone among the pre-Socratic systems, it undertook to furnish a rule of conduct as well as a theory of being. Yet, as Zeller has pointed out,11 it was only an apparent anomaly, for the ethical teaching of the Pythagoreans was not based on their physical theories, except in so far as a deep reverence for law and order was common to both.13 Perhaps, also, the separation of soul and body, with the ascription of a higher dignity to the former, which was a distinctive tenet of the school, may be paralleled with the position given to number as a kind of spiritual power creating and controlling the world of sense. So also political power was to be entrusted to an aristocracy trained in every noble accomplishment, and fitted for exercising authority over others by self-discipline, by mutual fidelity, and by habitual obedience to a rule of right. Nevertheless, we must look, with Zeller, for the true source of Pythagoreanism as a moral movement in that great wave of religious enthusiasm which swept over Hellas during the sixth century before Christ, intimately associated with the importation of Apollo-worship from Lycia, with the concentration of spiritual authority in the oracular shrine of Delphi, and the political predominance of the Dorian race, those Normans of the ancient world. Legend has thrown this connexion into a poetical form by making Pythagoras the son of Apollo; and the Samian sage, although himself an Ionian, chose the Dorian cities of Southern Italy as a favourable field for his new teaching, just as Calvinism found a readier acceptance in the advanced posts of the Teutonic race than among the people whence its founder sprang. Perhaps the nearest parallel, although on a far more extensive scale, for the religious movement of which we are speaking, is the spectacle offered by mediaeval Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of our era, when a series of great Popes had concentrated all spiritual power in their own hands, and were sending forth army after army of Crusaders to the East; when all Western Europe had awakened to the consciousness of its common Christianity, and each individual was thrilled by a sense of the tremendous alternatives committed to his choice; when the Dominican and Franciscan orders were founded; when Gothic architecture and Florentine painting arose; when the Troubadours and Minnes?ngers were pour14ing out their notes of scornful or tender passion, and the love of the sexes had become a sentiment as lofty and enduring as the devotion of friend to friend had been in Greece of old. The bloom of Greek religious enthusiasm was more exquisite and evanescent than that of feudal Catholicism; inferior in pure spirituality and of more restricted significance as a factor in the evolution of humanity, it at least remained free from the ecclesiastical tyranny, the murderous fanaticism, and the unlovely superstitions of mediaeval faith. But polytheism under any form was fatally incapable of coping with the new spirit of enquiry awakened by philosophy, and the old myths, with their naturalistic crudities, could not long satisfy the reason and conscience of thinkers who had learned in another school to seek everywhere for a central unity of control, and to bow their imaginations before the passionless perfection of eternal law. We have seen how Greek thought had arrived at a perfectly just conception of the process by which all physical transformations are effected. The whole extended universe is an aggregate of bodies, while each single body is formed by a combination of everlasting elements, and is destroyed by their separation. But if Empedocles was right, if these primary substances were no other than the fire, air, water, and earth of everyday experience, what became of the Heracleitean law, confirmed by common observation, that, so far from remaining unaltered, they were continually passing into one another? To this question the atomic theory gave an answer so conclusive, that, although ignored or contemned by later schools, it was revived with the great revival of science in the sixteenth century, was successfully employed in the explanation of every order of phenomena, and still remains the basis of all physical enquiry. The undulatory theory of light, the law of universal gravitation, and the laws of chemical combination can only be expressed in terms implying the existence of atoms; the laws of gaseous diffusion, and of thermodynamics generally, can only be understood with their help; and the latest develop34ments of chemistry have tended still further to establish their reality, as well as to elucidate their remarkable properties. In the absence of sufficient information, it is difficult to determine by what steps this admirable hypothesis was evolved. Yet, even without external evidence, we may fairly conjecture that, sooner or later, some philosopher, possessed of a high generalising faculty, would infer that if bodies are continually throwing off a flux of infinitesimal particles from their surfaces, they must be similarly subdivided all through; and that if the organs of sense are honeycombed with imperceptible pores, such may also be the universal constitution of matter.26 Now, according to Aristotle, Leucippus, the founder of atomism, did actually use the second of these arguments, and employed it in particular to prove the existence of indivisible solids.27 Other considerations equally obvious suggested themselves from another quarter. If all change was expressible in terms of matter and motion, then gradual change implied interstitial motion, which again involved the necessity of fine pores to serve as channels for the incoming and outgoing molecular streams. Nor, as was supposed, could motion of any kind be conceived without a vacuum, the second great postulate of the atomic theory. Here its advocates directly joined issue with Parmenides. The chief of the Eleatic school had, as we have seen, presented being under the form of a homogeneous sphere, absolutely continuous but limited in extent. Space dissociated from matter was to him, as afterwards to Aristotle, non-existent and impossible. It was, he exclaimed, inconceivable, nonsensical. Unhappily inconceivability is about the worst negative criterion of truth ever yet invented. His challenge was now35 taken up by the Atomists, who boldly affirmed that if non-being meant empty space, it was just as conceivable and just as necessary as being. A further stimulus may have been received from the Pythagorean school, whose doctrines had, just at this time, been systematised and committed to writing by Philolaus, its most eminent disciple. The hard saying that all things were made out of number might be explained and confirmed if the integers were interpreted as material atoms. there was at least no pretence about it. I know now what people I met her through the McBrides, and she is a very charming woman. I'd got just that much written, when--what do you think happened? Of COURSE I can find the way. I've been in New York three times and am The bearer of Kali walked into the sacred river up to his knees, and then dropped the idol. The[Pg 143] Hindoos who had followed him fell prostrate in fervent prayer, hiding their face in their hands, and then flung after the goddess, now lost in the waters, all the baskets, jars, and flowers, to be carried down the stream. For a moment the silver paper crown which had floated up spun on the water that was spangled by the moon, and then it sank in an eddy.
Yellow palaces, mirrored as gold in the luminous waters of the Ganges, came into view; cupolas quivering with dazzling lustre against the intense sky!and then the whole city vanished. Nothing was to be seen but a suburb of shabby buildings, the commonplace railway station crowded by a Burmese pilgrimage of Buddhists come from so far!who knows why?!to the holy Indian city. Yellow priests and white doll-like figures dragging bundles that fell open, dropping the most medley collection of objects to be picked up and stowed into the parcels again, only to roll out once more. A yelling crowd, hustling and bustling, shouting from one end of the station to the other, and finally[Pg 155] departing, like a flock of sheep, in long files down the dusty road, to be lost at last in the little bazaar. If Plotinus rose above the vulgar superstitions of the West, while, at the same time, using their language for the easier expression of his philosophical ideas, there was one more refined superstition of mixed Greek and Oriental origin which he denounced with the most uncompromising vigour. This was Gnosticism, as taught by Valentinus and his school. Towards the close of our last chapter, we gave some account of the theory in question. It was principally as enemies of the world and maligners of its perfection that the Gnostics made themselves offensive to the founder of Neo-Platonism. To him, the antithesis of good and evil was represented, not by the opposition of spirit and Nature, but by the opposition between his ideal principle through all degrees of its perfection, and unformed Matter. Like Plato, he looked on the348 existing world as a consummate work of art, an embodiment of the archetypal Ideas, a visible presentation of reason. But in the course of his attack on the Gnostics,518 other points of great interest are raised, showing how profoundly his philosophy differed from theirs, how entirely he takes his stand on the fixed principles of Hellenic thought. Thus he particularly reproaches his opponents for their systematic disparagement of Plato, to whom, after all, they owe whatever is true and valuable in their metaphysics.519 He ridicules their belief in demoniacal possession, with its wholly gratuitous and clumsy employment of supernatural agencies to account for what can be sufficiently explained by the operation of natural causes.520 And, more than anything else, he severely censures their detachment of religion from morality. On this last point, some of his remarks are so striking and pertinent that they deserve to be quoted. This absolute separation of Form and Matter, under their new names of Thought and Extension, once grasped, various principles of Cartesianism will follow from it by logical necessity. First comes the exclusion of final causes from philosophy, or rather from Nature. There was not, as with Epicurus, any anti-theological feeling concerned in their rejection. With Aristotle, against whom Descartes is always protesting, the final cause was not a mark of designing intelligence imposed on Matter from without; it was only a particular aspect of Form, the realisation of what Matter was always striving after by virtue of its inherent potentiality. When Form was conceived only as pure thought, there could be no question of such a process; the most highly organised bodies being only modes of figured extension. The revival of Atomism had, no doubt, a great deal to do with the preference for a mechanical interpretation of life. Aristotle had himself shown with masterly clearness the difference between his view of Nature and that taken by Democritus; thus indicating beforehand the direction in which an alternative to his own teaching might be sought; and Bacon had, in fact, already referred with approval to the example set by Democritus in dealing with teleological enquiries. On the horizon, coming at moderate speed, but growing large enough so that there could be no error of identification, came the amphibian. Its dun color and its tail marking were unmistakable. Dick, rounding a tree, stumbled. ^Distance to cover, seventy miles, ̄ Larry pondered. ^Our best speed, Jeff said, once, was about seventy miles an hour. The `phib¨ does sixty, top. ̄ ^Did you walk under a ladder, today, sir? ̄ asked Sandy seriously. "Is it because you think you ought to, or because you really want me?" She was looking at him steadily now, and he could not have lied to her. But the slender hand was warm and clinging, the voice low and sweet, the whole scene so cosey and domestic, and she[Pg 52] herself seemed so much more beautiful than ever, that he answered that it was because he wanted her!and for the moment it was quite true. Had so much as a blush come to her cheek, had she lowered her earnest gaze, had her voice trembled ever so little, it might have been true for all time. But she threw him back upon himself rudely, with an unfeminine lack of tact that was common with her. "Then I will marry you whenever you wish," she said. The buck fell back before her fury, but she followed him thrusting and slashing. Yet it might not, even then, have ended well for her, had there not come from somewhere overhead the sound most dreaded as an omen of harm by all Apaches!the hoot of an owl. The Indian gave a low cry of dismay and turned and darted in among the bushes. "I see him, I see him all the same," he protested, with tears and evident conviction. Twenty, yes ten, of those who, as the sound of the firing reached their ears, were making off at a run down the south road for the settlement in the valley, could have saved the fair-haired children and the young mother, who helped in the fruitless fight without a plaint of fear. Ten men could have done it, could have done it easily; but not one man. And Kirby knew it now, as the light of flames began to show through the chinks of the logs, and the weight of heavy bodies thudded against the door.
And the great river of rock is there, too, frozen upon the land like some devouring monster changed by a Gorgon head into lifeless stone. It is a formidable barrier across the hardly less formidable bad lands. It can be crossed in places where it is narrowest, not quite a mile in width, that is. But horses slip and clamber, and men cut through the leather of their heaviest shoes. FIVE-SHILLING PIECE OF THE SOUTH SEA COMPANY. [83] THE MOB RELEASING MR. WILKES ON HIS WAY TO PRISON. (See p. 193.) "Only be too glad of the dooty, sir," answered Si, saluting. "It'll give the boys something to think of besides hanging guerrillas. Besides, they're just crazy to git hold o' guns. Where kin I git muskets for 'em?" "Why wouldn't it be a good idee to put a lot o' us on the cow-ketcher, with fixed bayonets, and then let the engineer crack on a full head o' steam and run us right into 'em?" He proceeded on down the line until he came in front of Jim Humphreys and Sandy Baker, when Shorty's gun clicked again. The prisoners were conducted to the rear, and when Si returned with his squad to the regiment he found it had forced its way to the foot of the high wall of rock that rose straight up from the slope. "Don't try to persuade me," the little old woman said sharply. "Don't try to cozen me into something: I know all the tricks, Norma. I invented a good third of them, and it's been a long time since I had to use a textbook to remember the rest." RE: Your memo May 17 Marvor looks more like a master. "Freedom is good," he says.
The summer wore on. The sallow tints in Naomi's skin were exchanged for the buttery ones which used to be before her marriage. Her hair ceased to fall, her cheeks plumped out, her voice lost its weak shrillness. She made herself a muslin gown, and Reuben bought ribbons for it at Rye. For some months the antagonism between Odiam and Grandturzel remained in this polite state, most of the fighting being done by their champions. The landlord of the Cocks grew quite tired of chucking out Odiamites and Grandturzelites who could not, like their leaders, confine their war to words. But it only wanted some cause, however trivial, to make the principals show their fists. The time that Reuben would stay in the bar after Realf had entered it grew shorter and shorter, and his pretexts for leaving more and more flimsy. Realf himself, though a genial, good-tempered young man, could not help resenting the scorn with which he was treated. He once told Ginner that Backfield was an uncivilised[Pg 204] brute, and Ginner took care to forward this remark to the proper quarter. "I never beat my wife." He smiled grimly!"I d?an't." Often in the evenings, when the exhausting work of the day was done, he would wander out on the Moor, seeking as usual rest on the field of his labours. The tuft of firs would grow black and featureless against the dimming sky, and stars would hang pale lamps above the fog, which smoked round Boarzell, veiling the fields, till it seemed as if he stood alone on some desert island, in the midst of a shoreless sea. All sounds would be muffled, lights and shadows would blur, and he would be alone with the fir-clump and the stars and the strong smells of his land. She wondered if she were awake!everything seemed so strange, so new, and yet paradoxically so natural. Was she the same Caro who had washed the babies and cooked the supper and resigned herself to dying an old maid? She could not ponder things, ask herself how it was that a man who had not known her ten[Pg 342] minutes could love her!all she realised was his arm round her waist, and in her heart a seethe of happy madness. She rose the next morning with a bad headache and her eyes staring rather plaintively out of black saucers. None the less she was happy, even in spite of her[Pg 344] regrets. She loved and had been loved, so she told herself over and over again as she dressed David and Bill and prepared the breakfast. Why, even if, when he got home, Joe Dansay discovered that he did not really love her, she would still have had his love, and as for herself, she would go on loving him for ever!"for ever and ever and ever," she repeated in a low, trembling voice as she cut her father's bacon. Reuben received the news with the indifference due to outsiders. But he was not so calm when Pete told his tale at Odiam. Anne was furious when she heard of the invitation. "Wot have you come fur?" "And no king!" added Kirkby. "Men of Kent!" shouted Tyler, indignant at this pacific proposal, "what, do you suppose King Richard and his council, who are cooped up yonder, will think of us while we stand talking and gaping here? Think ye they will take off the poll-tax, or free the bondman? or open the prison door of our holy prophet, while they see us waiting like so many beggars, for them to read what is written on the sheepskins? I hold, that leaving half our brave fellows here, to let them know that if we do not mount their walls, we have an eye upon them, the rest should go on and see what is to be done in other parts of London. Who knows but we might get hold of that mortal fiend, John of Gaunt; if we once had him, by St. Nicholas! we might ask for what we liked. Stephen Holgrave, do you keep watch here, and let no one come or go: should there be any thing to be said, you know what to say!that is enough." And then, marshalling off a strong and picked body from among his followers, the smith hurried forward, accompanied by the galleyman and Kirkby, through the city, injuring neither person nor property, but only exacting from every one they encountered in their progress, a shout and a God-speed for the true commons.Xi extends condolences over Hong Kong building fire, urges all-out rescue efforts to minimize losses
(Xinhua) 08:02, November 27, 2025
BEIJING, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday extended condolences over a deadly residential building fire in Hong Kong, which killed at least 13 people.
Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, expressed sympathy to the families of the victims and those affected by the disaster. He urged all-out efforts to extinguish the fire and minimize casualties and losses.
In the wake of the fire, Xi attached great importance to the accident and immediately sought updates on the rescue efforts and casualties.
Xi instructed the director of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) to convey his condolences and sympathies to HKSAR Chief Executive John Lee.
He required the Hong Kong and Macao Work Office of the CPC Central Committee and the liaison office to support the HKSAR government in making all-out efforts to put out the fire, do everything possible in search and rescue, treat the injured, and comfort the victims' families.
(Web editor: Zhang Kaiwei, Du Mingming)
China releases white paper on arms control in new era
(Xinhua) 10:19, November 27, 2025
BEIJING, Nov. 27 (Xinhua) -- China's State Council Information Office on Thursday released a white paper titled "China's Arms Control, Disarmament, and Nonproliferation in the New Era."
The white paper said that China plays a constructive role in international arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation, and actively offers its initiatives and solutions.
China has been and will always be a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development, and a defender of the international order, it said.
The white paper was released to comprehensively present China's policies and practices on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation, and its position on security governance in emerging fields such as outer space, cyberspace, and artificial intelligence.
It was also to restate China's commitment to safeguarding world peace and security, and to call on countries around the world to work together for international arms control.
The white paper noted that China is committed to upholding the international arms control regime with the United Nations (UN) at its core. It works to promote global governance in arms control, supports all efforts to build a world of lasting peace and common security, and serves as a key promoter of international arms control.
It also noted that as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China has actively safeguarded the authority and effectiveness of the international arms control regime, played a constructive role in multilateral arms control in the nuclear, biological, chemical and other fields, and conscientiously performed its duties prescribed by international arms control treaties, making its due contribution to international arms control.
Emerging fields such as outer space, cyberspace, and AI represent new frontiers for human development. They create a new focus of strategic security, and new territories of global governance, the white paper pointed out.
China proposes that with the universal participation of all countries, the UN should play a pivotal role in fostering a global governance framework and standards for emerging fields based on broad consensus, while increasing the representation and voice of developing countries, it added.
The white paper stressed that China continues to build its domestic nonproliferation capacity, actively participating in the international nonproliferation process, promoting international cooperation on peaceful uses of science and technology, and facilitating the improvement of global nonproliferation governance.
Chinese modernization follows the path of peaceful development, and China's growth contributes to the growth of the world's peaceful forces. China stands ready to work with all peace-loving countries to build an equal and orderly multipolar world and promote universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization. It will consolidate and develop the UN-centered international arms control regime, work with all parties to build a community with a shared future for humanity, and create a brighter future for all, according to the white paper.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said the atmosphere of the phone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday was "positive, friendly, and constructive."
At a regular press briefing on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning confirmed that the U.S. side had initiated the call. She noted that since the start of President Trump's second term, the two leaders have maintained frequent communication.
Mao said the two heads of state exchanged views on issues of mutual concern, stressing that such communication is vital for the stable development of ChinaU.S. relations.
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