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Even the half-mad cranks whose absurd consciences prevent them from barring the way to the devil seemed to me to be turning into men under the prevailing influence. I saw a batch of them, neurotic and largely be-spectacled, but working with a will by the roadside. They will volunteer for the trenches yet.
On the second occasion, after waiting in an ante-room full of bearded and be-spectacled monsters such as haunt the British Museum Library, I was summoned before a board of reverend elders, who put me through a catechism, drowsy but prolonged, as to my qualifications and antecedents. It was a systematic affair. Could I decipher German manuscripts? Let them show me their toughest one, I said. No!
Meantime, in a clearing of the Teutonic forest, their sages were rearing a Tree of Cynical Wisdom, a sort of Upas tree, whose shade may be seen now lying over the prostrate body of Belgium. It must be said that they laboured openly enough, watering it with the most authentic sources of all madness, and watching with their be-spectacled eyes the slow ripening of the glorious blood-red fruit.
I do not think the young lady likes the position, for I know the old, be-spectacled professors are as pestering with their attentions as the insolent officers. She would have been so delighted at the relief promised by your return that she would run to meet you and you would not have been repulsed at the door."
Let us imagine fifteen portly, be-spectacled, middle-aged or elderly men seated around a table groaning under a collection of bottles of all shapes and sizes, addressing each other in laboured inverted English. The German love of titles is a matter of common knowledge.
Hentze taught English and French in half a dozen boys' and girls' schools in Brunswick, and his brother taught history in the "Gymnasium." These two mild-mannered be-spectacled old bachelors, who in their leisure moments took snuff and played with their poodle, were tremendous fire-eaters.
In the dark-haired, keen-eyed, well-dressed, middle-aged man, with commanding port and courtly address, he failed to recognise any resemblance to the flaxen-wigged, long-coated, be-spectacled, shambling sexagenarian whom he had known as Lebeau. Only now and then a tone of voice struck him as familiar, but he could not recollect where he had heard the voice it resembled.
Herr Preceptor would suggest procuring another which would strew roses no doubt along the thorny path. Capital idea. Of course they must then wait for the new grammar. Adjournment at eleven to the café for billiards. Deming was a good wielder of the cue. He said the Germans were too be-spectacled and blear-eyed to play well and by three o'clock he had usually won quite a number of marks.
Treading as seemingly silent as those wild human shapes, that straightened brawny backs to view me as I passed, that grinned in the fire-glow and spoke one to another, words lost to my stunned hearing, ere they bent to their labour again, obediently I followed the Captain's dim form until I was come where, bare-armed, leathern-aproned and be-spectacled, stood one who seemed of some account among these salamanders, who, nodding to certain words addressed to him by the Captain, seized a pair of tongs, swung open a furnace door, and plucking thence a glowing brand, whirled it with practised ease, and setting it upon the dies beneath a huge steam-hammer, nodded his head.
Brownside, the new Dean of Nottingham, some time Huntingdonian Professor of Divinity, and one of the acutest, if not soundest academical thinkers of the day. He was a little, prim, smirking, be-spectacled man, bald in front, with curly black hair behind, somewhat pompous in his manner, with a clear musical utterance, which enabled one to listen to him without effort.
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