"As the guest is inspecting this bright bit of colour, he will be aroused
by the full strident tones of a voice skilled in many languages, but
never so full and hearty as when bidding a friend welcome. The speaker,
Richard Burton, is a living proof that intense work, mental and physical,
sojourn in torrid and frozen climes, danger from dagger and from
pestilence, 'age' a person of good sound constitution far less than
may be supposed. . . .
"Leading the way from the drawing-rooms, or divans, he takes us through
bedrooms and dressing-rooms furnished in Spartan simplicity, with the
little iron bedsteads covered with bear-skins, and supplied with writing-
tables and lamps, beside which repose the Bible, the Shakspeare, the
Euclid, and the Breviary, which go with Captain and Mrs. Burton on all
their wanderings. His gifted wife, one of the Arundells of Wardour, is,
as becomes a scion of an ancient Anglo-Saxon and Norman Catholic house,
strongly attached to the Church of Rome; but religious opinion is never
allowed to disturb the peace of the Burton household, the head of which
is laughingly accused of Mohammedanism by his friends. The little rooms
are completely lined with rough deal shelves, containing perhaps eight
thousand or more volumes in every Western language, as well as in Arabic,
Persian, and Hindustani. Every odd corner is piled with weapons, guns,
pistols, boar-spears, swords of every shape and make, foils and masks,
chronometers, barometers, and all kinds of scientific instruments.
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