ogoff kind stamping and
shouting on their platforms, surrounded by open-mouthed soldiers and
peasants.

Here, too, were the quacks such as you might see at any fair in
Europe--quack dentists, quack medicine-men, men with ointments for
healing sores, men with pills, and little bottles of bright liquid, and
tricks for ruptures and broken legs and arms. A little way beyond them
were the pedlars. Here were the wildest men in the world. Tartars and
Letts and Indians, Asiatics with long yellow faces, and strange fellows
from Northern Russia. They had everything to sell, bright beads and
looking-glasses and little lacquered trays, coloured boxes, red and
green and yellow, lace and silk and cloths of every colour, purple and
crimson and gold. From all these men there rose a deafening gabble.

I pressed farther, although the crowd now around me was immense, and so
I reached the heart of the fair. Here were enormous merry-go-rounds, and
I had never seen such glittering things. They were from China, Japan,
where you will. They were hung in shining, gleaming colours, covered
with tinsel and silver, and, as they went tossing round, emitting from
their hearts a wild barbaric wail that may have been, in some far
Eastern city, the great song of all the lovers of the world for all I
know, the colours flashed and wheeled and dazzled, and the light
glittered from stem to stem of the brown silent trees. Here was the very
soul of the East. Near me a Chinaman, squatting on his haunches, was
showing before a gaping crowd the exploits of his trained mice, who
walked up and down little crimson ladders, poked their trembling noses
through holes of purple silk, and ran shivering down precipices of
golden embroidery. Near to him two Japanese were catching swords in
their mouths, and beyond them again a great number of Chinese were
tumbling and wrestling, and near to them again some Japanese children
did little tricks, catching coloured balls in wooden cups and turning
somersaults.

Around all these a vast mass of peasants pushed and struggled. Like
children they watched and smiled and laughed, and always, like the flood
of the dream, their numbers seemed to increase and increase....

The noise was deafening, but always above the merry-go-rounds and the
cheap-jacks and the shrill screams of the Japanese and the cries of the
pedlars I heard the chant of the "Marseillaise" carried on high through
the brown leafless park. I was bewildered and dazz