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In particular he had a mania in his more serious moods for defining and sub-defining things and putting them into pigeon-holes under the sub-definitions. Of these last, "love-letters" is the most important, and "mixed" the canniest, for it practically lets in everything.
"Now, that was not wanted till to-morrow evening," he observed, confidentially, to the pigeon-holes; "but, to-morrow evening, I may be paying my addresses to some angelic lady, or be engaged upon my epic.
With expectant fingers I explored the empty pigeon-holes and sounded the depths of the softly-sliding drawers. No books that I knew of gave any general recipe for a quest like this; but the glory, should I succeed unaided, would be all the greater.
During my walk this afternoon, I recollected, from the scattered pigeon-holes of memory, and arranged in consequent order, at least a score of good old apothegmatic shafts against the sex. Was it not, for example, in the grey beginning of days, was it not woman whose mortal taste brought sin into the world and all our woe?
All afternoon we worked, and by the evening the dining-room was transformed: blue cloths and lace runners on the deal side-table and improvised pigeon-holes; nicknacks here and there on tables and shelves and brackets; pictures on the walls; "kent" faces in photograph frames among the nicknacks; a folding carpet-seated armchair in a position of honour; cretonne curtains in the doorway between the rooms, and inside the shimmering white net a study in colour effect blue and white matting on the floor, a crimson cloth on the table, and on the cloth Cheon's "silver" swan sailing in a sea of purple, blue, and heliotrope water-lilies.
Then I climbed too, and found myself in a dirty, garret-like place, lit by the rays falling through about a score of pigeon-holes. For a few moments the place was dim, and I could hardly make out anything, but very soon after my eyes grew accustomed to the half light, and I was ready to join in Mercer's admiration as he cried, "Isn't he a beauty!"
The letter for Jaynes's Post-office reached the end of its journey first. It wasn't much of a post-office; only an old case of pigeon-holes set up in one corner of a cross-roads store. A man riding over from the nearest town twice a week brought the mail-bag on horseback.
Alec was poking in the pigeon-holes of the desk. There were no papers to be found except one bundle of letters, yellow with age. In one of the drawers, there were a few old daguerreo-types in velvet cases and a yellowed meer-schaum pipe. "'Eliphalet Lane, Esquire," read Sally, from the addresses on the letters, which were written on the folded outer sheet of the letters themselves.
Would she come out soon? The porter did not know. Would she come this way? The porter could not tell. Could he have her address? "If ye want to write to the laidy, write here," said the porter, with a motion of his hands to the pigeon-holes. John Storm felt humiliated and ashamed. The hairdressers' assistants were grinning at him.
When in the house Amuba was often present when Chebron studied, and as he himself was most anxious to acquire as much as he could of the wisdom of the Egyptians, Chebron taught him the hieroglyphic characters, and he was ere long able to read the inscriptions upon the temple and public buildings and to study from the papyrus scrolls, of which vast numbers were stowed away in pigeon-holes ranged round one of the largest rooms in the house.
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