mimicry to shame the original, holds an admiring crowd spellbound with
mingled trepidation and delight. There a native zoetrope, indefatigable
round of pleasure, whose top fashioned after the type of a turbine wheel
enables a candle at the centre ingeniously to supply both illumination
and motive power at the same time, affords to as many as can find room
on its circumference a peep at the composite antics of a consecutively
pictured monkey in the act of jumping a box. Beyond this "wheel of life"
lies spread out on a mat a most happy family of curios, the whole of
which you are quite prepared to purchase en bloc. While a little farther
on stands a flower show which seems to be coyly beckoning to you as the
blossoms nod their heads to an imperceptible breeze. So one attraction
fairly jostles its neighbor for recognition from the gay thousands that
like yourself stroll past in holiday delight. Chattering children in
brilliant colors, voluble women and talkative men in quieter but no less
picturesque costumes, stream on in kaleidoscopic continuity. And you,
carried along by the current, wander thus for miles with the tide of
pleasure-seekers, till, late at night, when at last you turn reluctantly
homeward, you feel as one does when wakened from some too delightful
dream.
Or instead of night, suppose it day and the place a temple. With those
who are entering you enter too through the outer gateway into the
courtyard. At the farther end rises a building the like of which for
richness of effect you have probably never beheld or even imagined. In
front of you a flight of white stone steps leads up to a terrace
whose parapet, also of stone, is diapered for half its height and open
latticework the rest. This piazza gives entrance to a building or set
of buildings whose every detail challenges the eye. Twelve pillars of
snow-white wood sheathed in part with bronze, arranged in four rows,
make, as it were, the bones of the structure. The space between the
centre columns lies open. The other triplets are webbed in the middle
and connected, on the sides and front, by grilles of wood and bronze
forming on the outside a couple of embrasures on either hand the
entrance in which stand the guardian Nio, two colossal demons, Gog
and Magog. Instead of capitals, a frieze bristling with Chinese lions
protects the top of the pillars. Above this in place of entablature
rises tier upon tier of decoration, each tier projecting beyond the one
beneath, and the topmost of all terminating in a balcony which encircles
the whole second story. The parapet of this balcony is one mass of
ornament, and its cornice another row of lions, brown instead of white.
The second story is no less crowded with carving. Twelve pillars make
its ribs, the spaces between being filled with elaborate woodwork, while
on top rest more friezes, more cornices, clustered with excrescences of
all colors and kinds, and guarded by lions innumerable. To begin to tell
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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