s, which were taper,
What's common in tapers--that's wax'?

I know not; for the Chinese visage is unfathomable. But I incline
to this day to the more charitable judgment; for the man's face
haunted me, and haunts me still; and I am weak enough to believe
that I should know the man and like him, if I met him in another
planet, a thousand years hence.

Then I walked back under the blazing sun across the Savanna, over
the sensitive plants and the mole-crickets' nests, while the great
locusts whirred up before me at every step; toward the archway
between the bamboo-clumps, and the red sentry shining like a spark
of fire beneath its deep shadow; and found on my way a dying
racehorse, with a group of coloured men round him, whom I advised in
vain to do the one thing needful--put a blanket over him to keep off
the sun, for the poor thing had fallen from sunstroke; so I left
them to jabber and do nothing: asking myself--Is the human race, in
the matter of amusements, as civilised as it was--say three thousand
years ago? People have, certainly--quite of late years--given up
going to see cocks fight, or heretics burnt: but that is mainly
because the heretics just now make the laws--in favour of themselves
and the cocks. But are our amusements to be compared with those of
the old Greeks, with the one exception of liking to hear really good
music? Yet that fruit of civilisation is barely twenty years old;
and we owe its introduction, be it always remembered, to the
Germans. French civilisation signifies practically, certainly in
the New World, little save ballet-girls, billiard-tables, and thin
boots: English civilisation, little save horse-racing and cricket.
The latter sport is certainly blameless; nay, in the West Indies,
laudable and even heroic, when played, as on the Savanna here, under
a noonday sun which feels hot enough to cook a mutton-chop. But
with all respect for cricket, one cannot help looking back at the
old games of Greece, and questioning whether man has advanced much
in the art of amusing himself rationally and wholesomely.

I had reason to ask the same question that evening, as we sat in the
cool verandah, watching the fireflies flicker about the tree-tops,
and listening to the weary din of the tom-toms which came from all
sides of the Savanna save our own, drowning the screeching and
snoring of the toads, and even, at times, the screams of an European
band, w