The idea speedily becomes a
conviction that this after all is not extraneous to the nation but
actually of the living flesh, a vital and imperative thing. The
vastness and audacity of it all cannot fail to strike the
imaginative mind, for the four or five hundred men who are
gathered here typify, if they do not yet represent, the four or
five hundred millions who make up the country. You see as it were
the nation in profile, a ponderous, slow-moving mass, quickly
responsive to curious subconscious influences--suddenly angry and
suddenly calm again because Reason has after all always been the
great goddess which is perpetually worshipped. All are scholarly
and deliberate in their movements. When the Speaker calls the
House in order and the debate commences, deep silence comes save
for the movement of hundreds of nervous hands that touch papers or
fidget to and fro. Every man uses his hands, particularly when he
speaks, not clenched as a European would do, but open, with the
slim figures speaking a language of their own, twisting, turning,
insinuating, deriding, a little history of compromises. It would
be interesting to write the story of China from a study of the
hands.
Each man goes to the rostrum to speak, and each has much to say.
Soon another impression deepens--that the Northerners with their
clear-cut speech and their fuller voices have an advantage over
the Southerners of the kind that all public performers know.
Pages:
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382