How his head burned! And leaping up, he looked at the calendar
on his bureau. "January the 28th!" No dream! His face hardened and
darkened. On! Not like Larry! On! 1914.
A STOIC
I
1
"Aequam memento rebus in arduis
Servare mentem:"--Horace.
In the City of Liverpool, on a January day of 1905, the Board-room of
"The Island Navigation Company" rested, as it were, after the labours
of the afternoon. The long table was still littered with the ink, pens,
blotting-paper, and abandoned documents of six persons--a deserted
battlefield of the brain. And, lonely, in his chairman's seat at the top
end old Sylvanus Heythorp sat, with closed eyes, still and heavy as an
image. One puffy, feeble hand, whose fingers quivered, rested on the arm
of his chair; the thick white hair on his massive head glistened in the
light from a green-shaded lamp. He was not asleep, for every now and
then his sanguine cheeks filled, and a sound, half sigh, half grunt,
escaped his thick lips between a white moustache and the tiny tuft of
white hairs above his cleft chin. Sunk in the chair, that square thick
trunk of a body in short black-braided coat seemed divested of all neck.
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