“The gardens,” he answered, “and the little yellow flowers that are sprinkled like stars on your green grass.”

“And what do you like least in England?”

“The horrible smells,” he said.

“Have you no smells in China?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied, “we have natural smells, but not the smell of gas and smoke and coal which sickens me here.  It is strange to me that people can find the smell of human beings disgusting and be able to stand the foul stenches of a London street.  This very road along which we are now travelling (we were passing through one of the less beautiful portions of the tramway line) makes me homesick for my country.  I long to see a Chinese village once more built of mud and fenced with mud, muddy-roaded and muddy-baked, with a muddy little stream to be waded across or passed by stepping on stones; with a delicate one-storeyed temple on the water-eaten bank, and green poppy fields round it; and the women in dark blue standing at the doorways, smoking their pipes; and the children, with three small budding pigtails on the head of each, clinging to them; and the river fringed with a thousand masts:  the boats, the houseboats, the barges and the ships in the calm, wide estuaries, each with a pair of huge eyes painted on the front bow.  And the people:  the men working at their looms and whistling a happy tune out of the gladness of their hearts.  And everywhere the sense of leisure, the absence of hurry and bustle and confusion; the dignity of manners and the grace of expression and of address.  And, above all, the smell of life everywhere.”

“I admit,” I said, “that our streets smell horribly of smoke and coal, but surely our people are clean?”

“Yes,” he said, “no doubt; but you forget that to us there is nothing so intolerably nasty as the smell of a clean white man!”

VENUS

John Fletcher was an overworked minor official in a Government office.  He lived a lonely life, and had done so ever since he had been a boy.  At school he had mixed little with his fellow school-boys, and he took no interest in the things that interested them, that is to say, games.  On the other hand, although he was what is called “good at work,” and did his lessons with facility and ease, he was not a literary boy, and did not care for books.  He was drawn towards machinery of all kinds, and spent his spare time in dabbling in scientific experiments or in watching trains go by on the Great Western line.  Once he blew off his eyebrows while making some experiment with explosive chemicals; his hands were always smudged with dark, mysterious stains, and his room was like that of a mediaeval alchemist, littered with retorts, bottles, and test-glasses.  Before leaving school he invented a flying machine (heavier than air), and an unsuccessful attempt to start it on the high road caused him to be the victim of much chaff and ridicule.