Excerpt from The Clanking of Chains<br><br>But now the scene it held seemed to bring the place into intimate and joyous connection with life. The young men and women were laughing or chatting gaily as they came up the stairway. Each held a bundle of clothes, a little box of some kind which might contain anything, a looking glass or else some piece of material which might be used somehow in stage decoration. The indi viduals, with the little burdens they carried, ap peared each as a distinct contribution to the gen eral effect, suddenly created in the room by their unusual appearance here. It was not until the young men had thrown off their overcoats and the young girls their cloaks or wraps that their col lective purpose began slowly to be apparent. The bundles were untied, the boxes were Opened, each bit of theatrical stuff began to find its place. All the people in the room began to make them selves up as if for a play, the girls going behind little screens at the side distant from the young men who, despite this particular protection, re mained modestly turned away as if to insure greater privacy.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.