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The streets were swept of mire; eaves ceased to distil their sooty rheum; even in the back-ways of Lambeth there was a sunny gleam on windows and a clear ring in all the sounds of life. It was Saturday. Between Egremont and Grail it had been decided that the latter should to-day take Thyrza to inspect the house.

How I loathed those dixies! The more grease you got on your hands and clothes the more appeared to be left in the dixie! The outside was sooty, the inside was greasy, and after I had done my best, the sergeant cook would make remarks about my ancestors which had nothing to do with the question, and I could not resent them lest I be detailed for a whole week of infernal dixie-cleaning.

So long as only a small portion of the earth was known to the Western nations, partial views necessarily predominated, and tropical heat and a black skin consequently appeared inseparable. "The Ethiopians," said the ancient tragic poet Theodectes of Phaselis, "are colored by the near sun god in his course with a sooty luster, and their hair is dried and crisped with the heat of his rays."

After ascending some steps, I entered a greasy, grimy, dimly-lighted room, the floor of which had never felt water save what had been sprinkled upon it to lay the dust. It had the old-fashioned hearth and fire-dogs and gaping sooty chimney, a bare table or so for the customers, a shelf with bottles, and the ordinary furniture and utensils of the provincial kitchen.

The hearth was formed of unhewn stones roughly put together, above it hung the kettle in an iron chain that was made fast to the blackened beam; the smoke from the smouldering peat ascended into the wide sooty chimney.

This tree is at once distinguished from the surrounding stems by its smaller diameter and its sooty trunk. The bark is crisp, jet black, and has the appearance of being charred. Beneath the bark the wood is perfectly white until the heart is reached, which is the fine black ebony of commerce. Here also, equally immovable, the calamander is growing, neglected and unknown.

I think it better to wait until to-morrow, George, before you do anything rash. I want to see something of the country. I want us to take a little journey together to-morrow, and then, out in the country, not in this grimy, sooty city, we will make arrangements for our marriage." "All right, my dear. Where do you intend to go?"

It was selected for London plantations, as the Thames Embankment, because its peeling bark was believed to protect it against the deposit of sooty particles, and because it grows quickly. For use in London itself it may be preferable: for semi-country seats, as the modern houses surrounded with their own grounds assume to be, it is unsightly. It has no association.

"Never was born!" persisted Topsy, with another grin, that looked so goblin-like, that, if Miss Ophelia had been at all nervous, she might have fancied that she had got hold of some sooty gnome from the land of Diablerie; but Miss Ophelia was not nervous, but plain and business-like, and she said, with some sternness, "You mustn't answer me in that way, child; I'm not playing with you.

This room was cramped and crowded. Newspapers and pamphlets lay heaped on the floor, and in the corners were four desks, at one of which three men, whom I learned later to be an Italian, an Englishman and a Spaniard, were talking together intensely. They took no notice of my entrance, for many other visitors, burly, sooty creatures, were constantly straggling in and out.