Quotation from: The Secret Agent

Written by: Joseph Conrad


The shop was small, and so was the house. It was one of those grimy
brick houses which existed in large quantities before the era of
reconstruction dawned upon London. The shop was a square box of a place,
with the front glazed in small panes. In the daytime the door remained
closed; in the evening it stood discreetly but suspiciously ajar.


The window contained photographs of more or less undressed dancing girls;
nondescript packages in wrappers like patent medicines; closed yellow
paper envelopes, very flimsy, and marked two-and-six in heavy black
figures; a few numbers of ancient French comic publications hung across a
string as if to dry; a dingy blue china bowl, a casket of black wood,
bottles of marking ink, and rubber stamps; a few books, with titles
hinting at impropriety; a few apparently old copies of obscure
newspapers, badly printed, with titles like _The Torch, The Gong_--rousing
titles. And the two gas jets inside the panes were always turned low,
either for economy's sake or for the sake of the customers.

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Old Dominion University CS Dept
Designed by Joan A. Smith for the CRATE project
Created: 2007-2-22T12:35:29Z
Part of the CratePreservation Project
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Part of a series of experiments in web preservation under the direction of Michael L. Nelson, Ph.D.