The pressman disapproved of that manifestation. It was not his business
to understand it. Is it ever the business of any pressman to understand
anything? I guess not. It would lead him too far away from the
actualities which are the daily bread of the public mind. He probably
thought the display worth very little from a picturesque point of view;
the weak voice; the colourless personality as incapable of an attitude as
a bed-post, the very fatuity of the clenched hand so ineffectual at that
time and place--no, it wasn't worth much. And then, for him, an
accomplished craftsman in his trade, thinking was distinctly "bad
business." His business was to write a readable account. But I who had
nothing to write, I permitted myself to use my mind as we sat before our
still untouched glasses. And the disclosure which so often rewards a
moment of detachment from mere visual impressions gave me a thrill very
much approaching a shudder. I seemed to understand that, with the shock
of the agonies and perplexities of his trial, the imagination of that
man, whose moods, notions and motives wore frequently an air of grotesque
mystery--that his imagination had been at last roused into activity.
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