3B 1.4
The texture of air
heavy with smoke
Kayerts and Carlier from Joseph Conrad's "An Outpost of Progress"
"There were two white men in charge of the trading station. Kayerts, the chief, was short and fat; Carlier, the assistant, was tall, with a large head and a very broad trunk perched upon a long pair of thin legs." "Kayerts had been in the Administration of the Telegraphs, and knew how to express himself correctly....He regretted the streets, the pavements, the cafes, his friends of many years; all the things he used to see, day after day; all the thoughts suggested by familiar things--the thoughts effortless, monotonous, and soothing of a Government clerk; he regretted all the gossip, the small enmities, the mild venom, and the little jokes of Government offices." "Carlier, an ex-non-commissioned officer of cavalry in an army guaranteed from harm by several European Powers.." "Society, not from any tenderness, but because of its strange needs, had taken care of those two men, forbidding them all independent thought, all initiative, all departure from
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