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"What in the name of common sense is this goblin here for?" demanded the major, testily. "There is a legend that once the owner of the chateau amused himself by decoying travellers here, putting them to sleep in that room, and by various devices alluring them thither.
Though he knew her as a friend to Dorothea and himself, he knew her as a subtle friend, hiding under her sympathy many of those kindly devices which experience keeps to foil the young. He did not complain of her for that, finding it legitimate that she should avail herself of what he called "the stock in trade of a chaperon"; while it had often amused him to outwit her.
Literacy tests and poll taxes became standard devices for limiting Negro voting. The "understanding test" required a citizen to interpret a portion of the state constitution to the satisfaction of the registrar. The severity of the test varied invariably with the color of the applicant. The "grandfather clause" prohibited those whose ancestors had not voted from exercising the franchise.
Marvellous must be the patience of the much-enduring man whom some or other of these devices do not provoke: slight causes often produce great effects; the simple scratching of a pick-axe, properly applied to certain veins in a mine, will cause the most dreadful explosions.
If society is of the wrong shape it does not matter in the least how intelligent and admirable may be the devices we construct for the operation of government or industry or education; they may be masterly products of human intelligence but they will not work, whereas on the other hand a sane, wholesome and decent society can so interpret and administer clumsy and defective instruments that they will function to admiration.
"Mamma," said young Tit-bit, a frisky young squirrel, to his mother one day, "why won't you let Frisky and me go into that pretty new cottage to play?" "My dear," said his mother, who was a very wary and careful old squirrel, "how can you think of it? The race of man are full of devices for traps and pitfalls, and who could say what might happen if you put yourself in their power?
Bruneau could neither read nor write, and perhaps it was as well for himself that his education had been thus neglected, for if he had been left to his own devices his imposture would have been very short-lived. But he contrived to attach two clever rascals to himself, who helped to prolong the fraud and to victimise the public. They were both convicts, but convicts of a high intellectual type.
All that I sketched that night near Ranceville, all that I wrote I did not once, but twice. These I carried openly, to be found if I were captured. But those you hold went hidden in the sole of my boot, which was hollowed for them, so that if I were taken and then escaped, they might go too!" I had read of such devices, I remembered vaguely.
I rapidly calculated, with the seeming high regard for accuracy that marks all efficiency experts, that these wretched devices cost her twenty-eight cents and a half each per diem. Estimating the total of them on the ranch at one hundred, this meant to her a loss of twenty-eight dollars and a half per diem. I used per diem twice to impress the woman.
Five minutes later Dickson was pursuing a quavering course like a snipe down the avenue. He was a miserable performer on a bicycle. Not for twenty years had he bestridden one, and he did not understand such new devices as free-wheels and change of gears. The mounting had been the worst part, and it had only been achieved by the help of a rockery.
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