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Paris Nights; And Other Impressions of Places and People
Paris Nights And Other Impressions of Places and People Author:Arnold Bennett General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1913 Original Publisher: George H. Doran Co. Subjects: Europe Fiction / Classics Fiction / Literary History / Europe / General Travel / Europe / General Travel / Europe / Great Britain Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustr... more »ations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: VI ONE OF THE CROWD He comes out of the office, which is a pretty large one, with a series of nods -- condescending, curt, indifferent, friendly, and deferential. He has detestations and preferences, even cronies; and if he has superiors, he has also inferiors. But whereas his fate depends on the esteem of a superior, the fate of no inferior depends on his esteem. When he nods deferentially he is bowing to an august power before which all others are in essence equal; the least of his inferiors knows that. And the least of his inferiors will light, on the stairs, a cigarette with the same gesture, and of perhaps the same brand, as his own -- to signalise the moment of freedom, of emergence from the machine into human citizenship. Presently he is walking down the crammed street with one or two preferences or indifferences, and they are communicating with each other in slang, across the shoulders of jostling interrupters, and amid the shouts of newsboys and the immense roaring of the roadway. And at the back of his mind, while he talks and smiles, or frowns, is a clear vision of a terminus and a clock and a train. Just as the water-side man, wherever he may be, is aware, night and day, of the exact state of the tide, so this man carries in his FROM WEST KENSINGTON TO TIIE CIRCUS (Page 106) brain a time-table of a particular series of trains, and subconsciously he is always aware whether he can catch a particular train, ...« less