It afforded his soul the same relaxation that his body
received when, in his shirt-sleeves in the sweltering smoking-room, he
drank beer with a _chef de poste_ who had been thrice tried for
murder.
Not only to every one was he a stranger, but to him everything was
strange; so strange as to appear unreal. This did not prevent him from
at once recognizing those things that were not strange, such as corrupt
officials, incompetence, mismanagement. He did not need the missionaries
to point out to him that the Independent State of the Congo was not a
colony administered for the benefit of many, but a vast rubber
plantation worked by slaves to fill the pockets of one man. It was not
in his work that Everett found himself confused. It was in his attitude
of mind toward almost every other question.
At first, when he could not make everything fit his rule of thumb, he
excused the country tolerantly as a "topsy-turvy" land. He wished to
move and act quickly; to make others move quickly. He did not understand
that men who had sentenced themselves to exile for the official term of
three years, or for life, measured time only by the date of their
release.
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