"A. E. Merritt - Through the Dragon Glass" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

Title: Through the Dragon Glass
Author: Abraham Merritt
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
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Edition: 1
Language: English
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Date first posted: June 2006
Date most recently updated: June 2006

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Through the Dragon Glass
by

Abraham Merritt
Herndon helped loot the Forbidden City when the Allies turned the suppression of the Boxers into the
most gorgeous burglar-party since the days of Tamerlane. Six of his sailormen followed faithfully his
buccaneering fancy. A sympathetic Russian highness whom he had entertained in New York saw to it
that he got to the coast and his yacht. That is why Hemdon was able to sail through the Narrows with as
much of the Son of Heaven's treasures as the most accomplished laborer in Peking's mission vineyards.

Some of the loot he gave to charming ladies who had dwelt or were still dwelling on the sunny side of his
heart. Most of it he used to fit up those two astonishing Chinese rooms in his Fifth Avenue house. And a
little of it, following a vague religious impulse, he presented to the Metropolitan Museum. This, somehow,
seemed to put the stamp of legitimacy on his part of the pillage--like offerings to the gods and building
hospitals and peace palaces and such things.

But the Dragon Glass, because he had never seen anything quite so wonderful, he set up in his bedroom
Where he could look at it the first thing in the morning, and he placed shaded lights about it so that he
could wake up in the night and look at it! Wonderful? It is more than wonderful, the Dragon Glass!
Whoever made it lived when the gods walked about the earth creating something new every day. Only a
man who lived in that sort of atmosphere could have wrought it. There was never anything like it.