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Your United States - Impressions of a first visit by Arnold Bennett
page 7 of 155 (04%)
about sport in the woods of Maine, a perfect menagerie of wild animals
where it was advisable to use a revolver lest the excessive noise of a
fowling-piece should disturb the entire forest, and how once he had shot
seven times at an imperturbable partridge showing its head over a tree,
and missed seven times, and how the partridge had at last flown off,
with a flicker of plumage that almost said aloud, "Well, I really can't
wait any longer!" And then might follow a simply tremendous discussion
about the digestibility of buckwheat-cakes.

And then the conversation of every group in the lounge would be stopped
by the entry of a page bearing a telegram and calling out in the voice
of destiny the name of him to whom the telegram was addressed. And then
another companion would relate in intricate detail a recent excursion
into Yucatan, speaking negligently--as though it were a trifle--of the
extraordinary beauty of the women of Yucatan, and in the end making
quite plain his conviction that no other women were as beautiful as the
women of Yucatan. And then the inevitable Mona Lisa would get onto the
carpet, and one heard, apropos, of the theft of Adam mantelpieces from
Russell Square, and of superb masterpieces of paint rotting with damp in
neglected Venetian churches, and so on and so on, until one had the
melancholy illusion that the whole art world was going or gone to
destruction. But this subject did not really hold us, for the reason
that, beneath a blasé exterior, we were all secretly preoccupied by the
beauty of the women of Yucatan and wondering whether we should ever get
to Yucatan.... And then, looking by accident away, I saw the dim,
provocative faces of girls in white jerseys and woolen caps peering from
without through the dark double windows of the lounge. And I was glad
when somebody suggested that it was time to take a turn. And outside, in
the strong wind, abaft the four funnels of the _Lusitania_, a star
seemed to be dancing capriciously around and about the masthead light.
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