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. There were clocks of every description from the finest
French cloisonne to the most intricate cuckoo clocks from which a
bird hopped forth to announce the hour, and each ticking its own
time regardless of every other. Tables were placed in various
parts of the room, on each of which were one, two or three
clocks. Swiss watches of the most curious and unique designs hung
about the walls. Two sofas sat back to back in the centre of the
room, and a beautiful little gilt desk on which was the most
wonderful of all his clocks, with several large foreign chairs
upholstered in plush and velvet, completed the furniture. I sat
down in one of these chairs to rest, for it was a hot summer day,
and immediately there proceeded from beneath me sweet strains of
music from a box concealed beneath the cushion. It was not only a
surprise, it was soothing and restful; and I was prepared to see
an electric fan pop out of somewhere and fan me to sleep. It was
really an Oriental fairy tale of an apartment.
As Kuang Hsu grew to boyhood he heard that out in this great
wonderful world, which he had never seen except with the eyes of
a child, there was a method of sending messages to distant cities
and provinces with the rapidity of a flash of lightning. For
centuries he and his ancestors had been sending their edicts, and
their Peking Gazette or court newspaper--the oldest journal in
the world--by runner, or relays of post horses, and the
possibility of sending them by a lightning flash appealed to him
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