One moment we were
crawling like insects between the trunks of great jungle trees that shot
upwards seventy feet or more without a branch, as if they were racing
for dear life skyward, and then everything fell away and there was the
old building. It startled the both of us. We got the sensation that you
get when you see a really good play. You forget your bodily presence and
you are only a bundle of nerves. You walk or sit or stand, but without
any effort or knowledge that you are doing it. We had been talking, and
the sight of that building, so unexpected, startled us into silence. It
would any one. Believe me, your imperturbable man with perfect, cool,
self-possession does not exist. Man's a jumpy thing, given to nerves.
You may deny it and talk about the unexcitability of the American
citizen and all that bunk, but let me tell you that your journalists and
moving picture producers and preachers and politicians have caught on to
the fact that man is jumpy, and they trade on their discovery, believe
me. They've got man on the hop every which way and keep him going.
"There had been a gateway there once, but for some reason or other it
had become blocked with a rank vegetation. The old gap was chocked full
with a thorny, flower-bearing bush so thick that a cat could not have
passed through.
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