Tales of the clipper ships

A maidservant had come in and lighted the gas in the dining-room, lowered the drab venetian blinds in the bay window, and drawn the heavy stamped plush curtains which hung stiffly under the gilt cornice. Broughton sipped his glass of wine and ate a sandwich, surveying the familiar room with that curious illogical sense of surprised resentment which humanity always feels in the presence of the calm indifference of inanimate things to its own transiency and mortality.