Manchurian Books

The
impossibility of it all delighted St. George rather more than the
reality, for there is no pastime, as all the world knows, quite like
that of practising the impossible. The days when, "like a man
unfree," he had fared forth from his unlovely lodgings clandestinely
to partake of an evil omelette, seemed enchantingly far away. It
was, St. George reflected, the experience of having been released
from prison, minus the disgrace.
Yet when he opened the door of the city room the odour of the
printers' ink somehow fused his elation in his liberty with the
elation of the return. This was like wearing fetters for bracelets.
When he had been obliged to breathe this air he had scoffed at its
fascination, but now he understood. "A newspaper office," so a
revered American of letters who had begun his life there had once
imparted to St. George, "is a place where a man with the
temperament of a savant and a recluse may bring his American vice of
commercialism and worship of the uncommon, and let them have it out.


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