The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mirror of Kong Ho, by Ernest Bramah

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Title: The Mirror of Kong Ho

Author: Ernest Bramah

Posting Date: July 26, 2008 [EBook #1077]
Release Date: October 1997
Last Updated: October 18, 2016

Language: English

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Produced by John Bickers





THE MIRROR OF KONG HO

By Ernest Bramah



     A lively and amusing collection of letters on western living
     written by Kong Ho, a Chinese gentleman. These addressed to
     his homeland, refer to the Westerners in London as
     barbarians and many of the aids to life in our society give
     Kong Ho endless food for thought. These are things such as
     the motor car and the piano; unknown in China at this time.




INTRODUCTION

ESTIMABLE BARBARIAN,--Your opportune suggestion that I should permit the
letters, wherein I have described with undeviating fidelity the customs
and manner of behaving of your accomplished race, to be set forth in
the form of printed leaves for all to behold, is doubtless
gracefully-intentioned, and this person will raise no barrier of dissent
against it.

In this he is inspired by the benevolent hope that his immature
compositions may to one extent become a model and a by-word to those who
in turn visit his own land of Fragrant Purity; for with exacting care
he has set down no detail that has not come under his direct observation
(although it is not to be denied that here or there he may, perchance,
have misunderstood an involved allusion or failed to grasp the inner
significance of an act), so that Impartiality necessarily sways his
brush, and Truth lurks within his inkpot.

In an entirely contrary manner some, who of recent years have gratified
us with their magnanimous presence, have returned to their own countries
not only with the internal fittings of many of our palaces (which,
being for the most part of a replaceable nature, need be only trivially
referred to, the incident, indeed, being generally regarded as a most
cordial and pressing variety of foreign politeness), but also--in
the lack of highly-spiced actuality--with subtly-imagined and truly
objectionable instances. These calumnies they have not hesitated to
commit to the form of printed books, which, falling into the hands
of the ignorant and undiscriminating, may even suggest to their
ill-balanced minds a doubt whether we of the Celestial Empire really are
the wisest, bravest, purest, and most enlightened people in existence.

As a parting, it only remains to be said that, in order to maintain
unimpaired the quaint-sounding brevity and archaic construction of your
prepossessing language, I have engraved most of the remarks upon the
receptive tablets of my mind as they were uttered. To one who can repeat
the Five Classics without stumbling this is a contemptible achievement.
Let it be an imposed obligation, therefore, that you retain these
portions unchanged as a test and a proof to all who may read. Of my
own deficient words, I can only in truest courtesy maintain that any
alteration must of necessity make them less offensively commonplace than
at present they are.

The Sign and immutable Thumb-mark of, Kong Ho

By a sure hand to the House of one Ernest Bramah.




THE MIRROR OF KONG HO




LETTER I


 Concerning the journey. The unlawful demons invoked by
 certain of the barbarians; their power and the manner of
 their suppression. Suppression. The incredible obtuseness of
 those who attend within tea-houses. The harmonious attitude
 of a person of commerce.


VENERATED SIRE (at whose virtuous and well-established feet an unworthy
son now prostrates himself in spirit repeatedly),--

Having at length reached the summit of my journey, that London of which
the merchants from Canton spoke so many strange and incredible things, I
now send you filial salutations three times increased, and in accordance
with your explicit command I shall write all things to you with an
unvarnished brush, well assured that your versatile object in committing
me to so questionable an enterprise was, above all, to learn the
truth of these matters in an undeviating and yet open-headed spirit of
accuracy and toleration.

Of the perils incurred while travelling in the awe-inspiring devices by
which I was transferred from shore to shore and yet further inland,
of the utter absence of all leisurely dignity on the part of
those controlling their movements, and of the almost unnatural
self-opinionatedness which led them to persist in starting at a stated
and prearranged time, even when this person had courteously pointed
out to them by irrefutable omens that neither the day nor the hour was
suitable for the venture, I have already written. It is enough to assert
that a similar want of prudence was maintained on every occasion, and,
as a result, when actually within sight of the walls of this city, we
were involved for upwards of an hour in a very evilly-arranged yellow
darkness, which, had we but delayed for a day, as I strenuously advised
those in authority after consulting the Sacred Flat and Round Sticks, we
should certainly have avoided.

Concerning the real nature of the devices by which the ships are
propelled at sea and the carriages on land, I must still unroll a blank
mind until I can secretly, and without undue hazard, examine them more
closely. If, as you maintain, it is the work of captive demons hidden
away among their most inside parts, it must be admitted that these
usually intractable beings are admirably trained and controlled, and
I am wide-headed enough to think that in this respect we
might--not-withstanding our nine thousand years of civilised
refinement--learn something of the methods of these barbarians. The
secret, however, is jealously guarded, and they deny the existence of
any supernatural forces; but their protests may be ignored, for there
is undoubtedly a powerful demon used in a similar way by some of the
boldest of them, although its employment is unlawful. A certain kind of
chariot is used for the occupation of this demon, and those who wish
to invoke it conceal their faces within masks of terrifying design, and
cover their hands and bodies with specially prepared garments, without
which it would be fatal to encounter these very powerful spirits.
While yet among the habitations of men, and in crowded places, they are
constrained to use less powerful demons, which are lawful, but when
they reach the unfrequented paths they throw aside all restraint, and,
calling to their aid the forbidden spirit (which they do by secret
movements of the hands), they are carried forward by its agency at a
speed unattainable by merely human means. By day the demon looks forth
from three white eyes, which at night have a penetrating brilliance
equal to the fiercest glances of the Sacred Dragon in anger. If any
person incautiously stands in its way it utters a warning cry of
intolerable rage, and should the presumptuous one neglect to escape to
the roadside and there prostrate himself reverentially before it, it
seizes him by the body part and contemptuously hurls him bruised and
unrecognisable into the boundless space of the around. Frequently
the demon causes the chariot to rise into the air, and it is credibly
asserted by discriminating witnesses (although this person only sets
down as incapable of denial that which he has actually beheld) that
some have maintained an unceasing flight through the middle air for a
distance of many li. Occasionally the captive demon escapes from the
bondage of those who have invoked it, through some incautious gesture
or heretical remark on their part, and then it never fails to use them
grievously, casting them to the ground wounded, consuming the chariot
with fire, and passing away in the midst of an exceedingly debased
odour, by which it is always accompanied after the manner of our own
earth spirits.

This being, as this person has already set forth, an unlawful demon on
account of its power when once called up, and the admitted uncertainty
of its movements, those in authority maintain a stern and inexorable
face towards the practice. To entrap the unwary certain persons (chosen
on account of their massive outlines, and further protected from evil
influences by their pure and consistent habits) keep an unceasing watch.
When one of them, himself lying concealed, detects the approach of such
a being, he closely observes the position of the sun, and signals to
the other a message of warning. Then the second one, shielded by the
sanctity of his life and rendered inviolable by the nature of his
garments--his sandals alone being capable of overturning any demon from
his path should it encounter them--boldly steps forth into the road and
holds out before him certain sacred emblems. So powerful are these
that at the sight the unlawful demon confesses itself vanquished, and
although its whole body trembles with ill-contained rage, and the air
around is poisoned by its discreditable exhalation, it is devoid of
further resistance. Those in the chariot are thereupon commanded to
dismiss it, and being bound in chains they are led into the presence of
certain lesser mandarins who administer justice from a raised dais.

“Behold!” exclaims the chief of the captors, when the prisoners have
been placed in obsequious attitudes before the lesser mandarins, “thus
the matter chanced: The honourable Wang, although disguised under the
semblance of an applewoman, had discreetly concealed himself by the
roadside, all but his head being underneath a stream of stagnant water,
when, at the eighth hour of the morning, he beheld these repulsive
outcasts approaching in their chariot, carried forward by the diabolical
vigour of the unlawful demon. Although I had stationed myself several li
distant from the accomplished Wang, the chariot reached me in less than
a breathing space of time, those inside assuming their fiercest and most
aggressive attitudes, and as they came repeatedly urging the demon to
increased exertions. Their speed exceeded that of the swallow in
his hymeneal flight, all shrubs and flowers by the wayside withered
incapably at the demon’s contaminating glance, running water ceased
to flow, and the road itself was scorched at their passage, the earth
emitting a dull bluish flame. These facts, and the times and the
distances, this person has further inscribed in a book which thus
disposes of all possible defence. Therefore, O lesser mandarins, let
justice be accomplished heavily and without delay; for, as the proverb
truly says, ‘The fiercer the flame the more useless the struggles of the
victim.’”

At this point the prisoners frequently endeavour to make themselves
heard, protesting that in the distance between the concealed Wang and
the one who stands accusing them they had thrice stopped to repair their
innermost details, had leisurely partaken of food and wine, and had
also been overtaken, struck, and delayed by a funeral procession. But so
great is the execration in which these persons are held, that although
murderers by stealth, outlaws, snatchers from the body, and companies of
men who by strategy make a smaller sum of money appear to be larger, can
all freely testify their innocence, raisers of this unlawful demon
must not do so, and they are beaten on the head with chains until they
desist.

Then the lesser mandarins, raising their voices in unison, exclaim,
“The amiable Tsay-hi has reported the matter in a discreet and impartial
spirit. Hear our pronouncement: These raisers of illegal spirits
shall each contribute ten taels of gold, which shall be expended in
joss-sticks, in purifying the road which they have scorched, and in
alleviating the distress of the poor and virtuous of both sexes. The
praiseworthy Tsay-hi, moreover, shall embroider upon his sleeve an
honourable sign in remembrance of the event. Let drums now be beat, and
our verdict loudly proclaimed throughout the province.”

These things, O my illustrious father (although on account of my
contemptible deficiencies of style much may seem improbable to your
all-knowing mind), these things I write with an unbending brush; for
I set down only that which I have myself seen, or read in their own
printed records. Doubtless it will occur to one of your preternatural
intelligence that our own system of administering justice, whereby the
person who can hire the greater number of witnesses is reasonably held
to be in the right, although perhaps not absolutely infallible, is in
every way more convenient; but, as it is well said, “To the blind, night
is as acceptable as day.”

Henceforth you will have no hesitation in letting it be known throughout
Yuen-ping that these foreign barbarians do possess secret demons, in
spite of their denials. Doubtless I shall presently discover others no
less powerful.

With honourable distinction this person has at length grasped the
essential details of the spoken language here--not sufficiently well,
indeed, to make himself understood on most occasions, or even to
understand others, but enough to perceive clearly when he fails to
become intelligible or when they experience a like difficulty with him.
Upon an earlier occasion, before he had made so much progress, being one
day left to his own resources, and feeling an internal lack, he entered
what appeared to be a tea-shop of reputable demeanour, and, seating
himself at one of the little marble tables, he freely pronounced the
carefully-learned word “rice” to the attending nymph. To put aside all
details of preparation (into which, indeed, this person could not
enter) he waved his hand gracefully, at the same time smiling with an
expression of tolerant acquiescence, as of one who would say that what
was good enough to be cooked and offered by so entrancing a maiden
was good enough to be eaten by him. After remaining in unruffled
tranquillity for the full portion of an hour, and observing that no
other person around had to wait above half that period, this one began
to perceive that the enterprise was not likely to terminate in a
manner satisfactory to himself; so that, leaving this place with a few
well-chosen phrases of intolerable regret in his own tongue, he entered
another, and conducted himself in a like fashion.... Towards evening,
with an unperturbed exterior, but materially afflicted elsewhere, this
person seated himself within the eleventh tea-shop, and, pointing first
towards his own constituents of digestion, then at the fire, and
lastly in an upward direction, thereby signified to any not of stunted
intellect that he had reached such a condition of mind and body that he
was ready to consume whatever the ruling deities were willing to allot,
whether boiled, baked, roast, or suspended from a skewer. In this
resolve nothing would move him, until--after many maidens had approached
with outstretched hands and gestures of despair--there presently entered
a person wearing the helmet of a warrior and the manner of a high
official, who spoke strongly, yet persuasively, of the virtues of
immediate movement and a quiet and reposeful bearing.

Assuredly a people who devote so little attention to the study of food,
and all matters connected with it, must inevitably remain barbaric,
however skilfully they may feign a superficial refinement. It is said,
although I do not commit this matter to my own brush, that among them
are more books composed on subjects which have no actual existence
than on cooking, and, incredible as it may appear, to be exceptionally
round-bodied confers no public honour upon the individual. Should a
favourable occasion present itself, there are many who do not scruple to
jest upon the subject of food, or, what is incalculably more depraved,
upon the scarcity of it.

Nevertheless, there are exceptions of a highly distinguished radiance.
Among these must be accounted one into whose presence this person was
recently led by our polished and harmonious friend Quang-Tsun, the
merchant in tea and spices. This versatile person, whose business-name
is spoken of as Jones Bob-Jones, is worthy of all benignant respect,
and in a really enlightened country would doubtless be raised to a
more exalted position than that of a breaker of outsides (an occupation
difficult to express adequately in the written language of a country
where it is unknown), for his face is like the sun setting in the time
of harvest, his waist garment excessive, and the undoubted symmetry of
his middle portions honourable in the extreme. So welcome in my eyes,
after witnessing an unending stream of concave and attenuated barbarian
ghosts, was the sight of these perfections of Jones Bob-Jones, that
instead of the formal greeting of this Island--the unmeaning “How do
you do it?”--I shook hands cordially with myself, and exclaimed
affectionately in our own language, “Illimitable felicities! How is your
stomach?”

“Well,” replied Jones Bob-Jones, after Quang-Tsun had interpreted this
polite salutation to his understanding, “since you mention it, that’s
just the trouble; but I’m going on pretty well, thanks. I’ve tried most
of the advertised things, and now my doctor has put me practically on a
bread-and-water course--clear soup, boiled fish, plain joint, no sweets,
a crumb of cheese, and a bare three glasses of Hermitage.”

During this amiable remark (of which, as it is somewhat of a technical
nature, I was unable to grasp the contained significance until the
agreeable Quang-Tsun had subsequently repeated it several times for my
retention), I maintained a consistent expression of harmonious agreement
and gratified esteem (suitable, I find, for all like occasions), and
then, judging from the sympathetic animation of Jones Bob-Jones’s
countenance, that it had not improbably been connected with food,
I discreetly introduced the subject of sea-snails, preserved in the
essence of crushed peaches, by courteously inquiring whether he had ever
partaken of such a delicacy.

“No,” replied the liberal-minded person, when--encouraged by the
protruding eagerness of his eyes at the mention of the viand--I had
further spoken of the refined flavour of the dish, and explained the
manner of its preparation. “I can’t say that I have, but it sounds
uncommonly good--something like turtle, I should imagine. I’ll see if
they can get it for me at Pimm’s.”

This filial tribute goes by a trusty hand, in the person of one Ki Nihy,
who is shortly committing himself to the protection of his ancestors
and the voracity of the unbounded Bitter Waters; and with brightness
and gold it will doubtless reach you in the course of twelve or eighteen
moons. The superstitious here, this person may describe, when they wish
to send messages from one to another, inscribe upon the outer cover a
written representation of the one whose habitation they require, and
after affixing a small paper talisman, drop it into a hole in the
nearest wall, in the hope that it may be ultimately conveyed to the
appointed spot, either by the services of the charitably-disposed
passer-by, or by the intervention of the beneficent deities.

With a multiplicity of greetings and many abject expressions of a
conscious inferiority, and attested by an unvarying thumb-mark.

KONG HO. (Effete branch of a pure and magnanimous trunk.)


To Kong Ah-Paik, reclining beneath the sign of the Lead Tortoise, in a
northerly direction beyond the Lotus Beds outside the city of Yuen-ping.
The Middle Flowery Kingdom.




LETTER II


 Concerning the ill-destined manner of existence of the hound
 Hercules. The thoughtlessly-expressed desire of the
 entrancing maiden and its effect upon a person of
 susceptible refinement. The opportune (as it may yet be
 described) visit of one Herbert. The behaviour of those
 around. Reflections.


VENERATED SIRE (whose large right hand is continuously floating in
spirit over the image of this person’s dutiful submission),--

Doubtless to your all-consuming prescience, it will at once become plain
that I have abandoned the place of residence from which I directed my
former badly-written and offensively-constructed letter, the house of
the sympathetic and resourceful Maidens Blank, where in return for an
utterly inadequate sum of money, produced at stated intervals, this very
much inferior person was allowed to partake of a delicately-balanced and
somewhat unvarying fare in the company of the engaging of both sexes,
and afterwards to associate on terms of honourable equality with them in
the chief apartment. The reason and manner of this one’s departure
are in no degree formidable to his refined manner of conducting any
enterprise, but arose partly from an insufficient grasp of the more
elaborate outlines of a confessedly involved language, and still more
from a too excessive impetuousness in carrying out what at the time he
believed to be the ambition of one who had come to exercise a melodious
influence over his most internal emotions. Well remarked the Sage, “A
piece of gold may be tried between the teeth; a written promise to pay
may be disposed of at a sacrifice to one more credulous; but what shall
be said of the wind, the Hoang Ho, and the way of a woman?”

To contrive a pitfall for this short-sighted person’s immature feet,
certain malicious spirits had so willed it that the chief and more
autumnal of the Maidens Blank (who, nevertheless, wore an excessively
flower-like name), had long lavished herself upon the possession of an
obtuse and self-assertive hound, which was in the habit of gratifying
this inconsiderable person and those who sat around by continually
depositing upon their unworthy garments details of its outer surface,
and when the weather was more than usually cold, by stretching its
graceful and refined body before the fire in such a way as to ensure
that no one should suffer from a too acute exposure to the heat. From
these causes, and because it was by nature a hound which even on the
darkest night could be detected at a more than reasonable distance away,
while at all times it did not hesitate to shake itself freely into
the various prepared viands, this person (and doubtless others also)
regarded it with an emotion very unfavourable towards its prolonged
existence; but observing from the first that those who permitted
themselves to be deposited upon, and their hands and even their faces to
be hound-tongue-defiled with the most externally cheerful spirit of
word suppression, invariably received the most desirable of the allotted
portions of food, he judged it prudent and conducive to a settled
digestion to greet it with favourable terms and actions, and to refer
frequently to its well-displayed proportions, and to the agile dexterity
which it certainly maintained in breathing into the contents of every
dish. Thus the matter may be regarded as being positioned for a space of
time.

One evening I returned at the appointed gong-stroke of dinner, and was
beginning, according to my custom, to greet the hound with ingratiating
politeness, when the one of chief authority held up a reproving hand, at
the same time exclaiming:

“No, Mr. Kong, you must not encourage Hercules with your amiable
condescension, for just now he is in very bad odour with us all.”

“Undoubtedly,” replied this person, somewhat puzzled, nevertheless, that
the imperfection should thus be referred to openly by one who hitherto
had not hesitated to caress the hound with most intimate details,
“undoubtedly the surrounding has a highly concentrated acuteness
to-night, but the ever-present characteristic of the hound Hercules is
by no means new, for whenever he is in the room--”

At this point it is necessary to explain that the ceremonial etiquette
of these barbarian outcasts is both conflicting and involved. Upon
most of the ordinary occasions of life to obtrude oneself within the
conversation of another is a thing not to be done, yet repeatedly when
this unpretentious person has been relating his experience or inquiring
into the nature and meaning of certain matters which he has witnessed,
he has become aware that his words have been obliterated, as it were,
and his remarks diverted from their original intention by the sudden and
unanticipated desire of those present to express themselves loudly on
some topic of not really engrossing interest. Not infrequently on such
occasions every one present has spoken at once with concentrated anxiety
upon the condition of the weather, the atmosphere of the room, the hour
of the day, or some like detail of contemptible inferiority. At other
times maidens of unquestionable politeness have sounded instruments of
brass or stringed woods with unceasing vigour, have cast down ornaments
of china, or even stood upon each other’s--or this person’s--feet with
assumed inelegance. When, therefore, in the midst of my agreeable remark
on the asserted no fragrance of the hound Hercules, a gentleman of
habitual refinement struck me somewhat heavily on the back of the head
with a reclining seat which he was conveying across the room for the
acceptance of a lady, and immediately overwhelmed me with apologies
of almost unnecessary profusion, my mind at once leapt to an inspired
conclusion, and smiling acquiescently I bowed several times to each
person to convey to them an admission of the undoubted fact that to the
wise a timely omen before the storm is as effective as a thunderbolt
afterwards.

It chanced that there was present the exceptionally prepossessing maiden
to whom this person has already referred. So varied and ornate were her
attractions that it would be incompetent in one of my less than average
ability to attempt an adequate portrayal. She had a light-coloured name
with the letters so harmoniously convoluted as to be quite beyond my
inferior power of pronunciation, so that if I wished to refer to her
in her absence I had to indicate the one I meant by likening her to
a full-blown chrysanthemum, a piece of rare jade, an ivory pagoda of
unapproachable antiquity, or some other object of admitted grace. Even
this description may scarcely convey to you the real extent of her
elegant personality; but in her presence my internal organs never failed
to vibrate with a most entrancing uncertainty, and even now, at the
recollection of her virtuous demeanour, I am by no means settled within
myself.

“Well,” exclaimed this melodious vision, with sympathetic tact, “if
every one is going to disown poor Hercules because he has eaten all our
dinners, I shall be quite willing to have him, for he is a dzear ole
loveykins, wasn’t ums?” (This, O my immaculate and dignified sire, which
I transcribe with faithful undeviation, appears to be the dialect of
a remote province, spoken only by maidens--both young and of autumnal
solitude--under occasional mental stress; as of a native of Shan-si
relapsing without consciousness into his uncouth tongue after passing a
lifetime in the Capital.) “Don’t you think so too, Mr. Kong?”

“When the sun shines the shadow falls, for truly it is said, ‘To the
faithful one even the voice of the corncrake at evening speaks of his
absent love,’” replied this person, so engagingly disconcerted at
being thus openly addressed by the maiden that he retained no delicate
impression of what she said, or even of what he was replying, beyond
an unassuming hope that the nature of his feelings might perchance be
inoffensively revealed to her in the semblance of a discreet allegory.

“Perhaps,” interposed a person of neglected refinement, turning towards
the maiden, “you would like to have a corncrake also, to remind you of
Mr. Kong?”

“I do not know what a corncrake is like,” replied the maiden with
commendable dignity. “I do not think so, however, for I once had a pair
of canaries, and I found them very unsatisfying, insipid creatures. But
I should love to have a little dog I am sure, only Miss Blank won’t hear
of it.”

“Kong Ho,” thought this person inwardly, “not in vain have you burnt
joss sticks unceasingly, for the enchanting one has said into your
eyes that she would love to partake of a little dog. Assuredly we have
recently consumed the cold portion of sheep on more occasions than a
strict honourableness could require of those who pay a stated sum at
regular intervals, and the change would be a welcome one. As she truly
says, the flavour even of canaries is trivial and insignificant by
comparison.” During the period of dinner--which consisted of eggs and
green herbs of the field--this person allowed the contemplation to grow
within him, and inspired by a most pleasant and disinterested ambition
to carry out the expressed wishes of the one who had spoken, he
determined that the matter should be unobtrusively arranged despite the
mercenary opposition of the Maidens Blank.

This person had already learned by experience that dogs are rarely if
ever exposed for sale in the stalls of the meat venders, the reason
doubtless being that they are articles of excessive luxury and reserved
by law for the rich and powerful. Those kept by private persons are
generally closely guarded when they approach a desirable condition of
body, and the hound Hercules would not prove an attractive dish to those
who had known him in life. Nevertheless, it is well said, “The Great
Wall is unsurmountable, but there are many gaps through,” and that
same evening I was able to carry the first part of my well-intentioned
surprise into effect.

The matter now involves one named Herbert, who having exchanged gifts
of betrothal with a maiden staying at the house, was in the habit of
presenting himself openly, when he was permitted to see her, after the
manner of these barbarians. (Yet even of them the more discriminating
acknowledge that our customs are immeasurably superior; for when I
explained to the aged father of the Maidens Blank that among us the
marriage rites are irrevocably performed before the bride is seen
unveiled by man, he sighed heavily and exclaimed that the parents of
this country had much to learn.)

The genial-minded Herbert had already acquired for himself the
reputation of being one who ceaselessly removes the gravity of others,
both by word and action, and from the first he selected this obscure
person for his charitable purpose to a most flattering extent. Not only
did he--on the pretext that his memory was rebellious--invariably greet
me as “Mr. Hong Kong,” but on more than one occasion he insisted, with
mirth-provoking reference to certain details of my unbecoming garments,
that I must surely have become confused and sent a Mrs. Hong Kong
instead of myself, and frequently he undermined the gravity of all most
successfully by pulling me backwards suddenly by the pigtail, with the
plea that he imagined he was picking up his riding-whip. This attractive
person was always accompanied by a formidable dog--of convex limbs,
shrunken lip, and suspicious demeanour--which he called Influenza, to
the excessive amusement of those to whom he related its characteristics.
For some inexplicable reason from the first it regarded my lower apparel
as being unsuitable for the ordinary occasions of life, and in spite
of the low hissing call by which its master endeavoured to attract
its attention to himself, it devoted its energies unceasingly to the
self-imposed task of removing them fragment by fragment. Nevertheless it
was a dog of favourable size and condition, and it need not therefore be
a matter for surprise that when the intellectual person Herbert took
his departure on the day in question it had to be assumed that it had
already preceded him. Having accomplished so much, this person found
little difficulty in preparing it tastefully in his own apartment, and
making the substitution on the following day.

Although his mind was confessedly enlarged at the success of his
venture, and his hopes most ornamentally coloured at the thought of the
adorable one’s gratified esteem when she discovered how expertly her
wishes had been carried out, this person could not fail to notice that
the Maiden Blank was also materially agitated when she distributed the
contents of the dish before her.

“Will you, of your enlightened courtesy, accept, and overlook the
deficiencies of, a portion of rabbit-pie, O high-souled Mr. Kong?” she
inquired gracefully when this insignificant person was reached, and,
concealing my many-hued emotion beneath an impassive face, I bowed
agreeably as I replied, “To the beggar, black bread is a royal course.”

“WHAT pie did you say, dear?” whispered another autumnal maiden, when
all had partaken somewhat, and at her words a most consistently acute
silence involved the table.

“I--I don’t quite know,” replied the one of the upper end, becoming
excessively devoid of complexion; and restraining her voice she
forthwith sent down an attending slave to inquire closely.

At this point a person of degraded ancestry endeavoured to remove the
undoubted cloud of depression by feigning the nocturnal cry of the
domestic cat; but in this he was not successful, and a maiden opposite,
after fixedly regarding a bone on her plate, withdrew suddenly,
embracing herself as she went. A moment later the slave returned,
proclaiming aloud that the dish which had been prepared for the occasion
had now been accidentally discovered by the round-bodied cook beneath
the cushions of an arm-chair (a spot by no means satisfactory to this
person’s imagination had the opportunities at his disposal been more
diffuse).

“What, then, is this of which we have freely partaken?” cried they
around, and, in the really impressive silence which followed, an
inopportune person discovered a small silver tablet among the fragments
upon his plate, and, taking it up, read aloud the single word,
“Influenza.”

During the day, and even far into the uncounted gong-strokes of the
time of darkness, this person had frequently remained in a fascinated
contemplation of the moment when he should reveal himself and stand up
to receive the benevolently-expressed congratulations of all who paid
an agreed sum at fixed intervals, and, particularly, the dazzling though
confessedly unsettling glance-thanks of the celestially-formed maiden
who had explicitly stated that she was desirous of having a little
dog. Now, however, when this part of the enterprise ought to have taken
place, I found myself unable to evade the conclusion that some important
detail of the entire scheme had failed to agree harmoniously with the
rest, and, had it been possible, I would have retired with unobtrusive
tact and permitted another to wear my honourable acquirements. But, for
some reason, as I looked around I perceived that every eye was fixed
upon me with what at another time would have been a most engaging
unanimity, and, although I bowed with undeterred profusion, and
endeavoured to walk out behind an expression of all-comprehensive
urbanity that had never hitherto failed me, a person of unsympathetic
outline placed himself before the door, and two others, standing one
on each side of me, gave me to understand that a recital of the full
happening was required before I left the room.

It is hopeless to expect a display of refined intelligence at the hands
of a people sunk in barbarism and unacquainted with the requirements of
true dignity and the essentials of food preparation. On the manner
of behaving of the male portion of those present this person has
no inducement whatever to linger. Even the maiden for whom he had
accomplished so much, after the nature of the misunderstanding had been
made plain to her, uttered only a single word of approval, which, on
subsequently consulting a book of interpretations, this person found to
indicate: “A person of weak intellect; one without an adequate sense of
the proportion and fitness of things; a buffoon; a jester; a compound of
gooseberries scalded and crushed with cream”; but although each of these
definitions may in a way be regarded as applicable, he is still unable
to decide which was the precise one intended.

With salutations of filial regard, and in a spirit seven times refined
by affliction and purified by vain regrets.

KONG HO. (Upon whose tablet posterity will perchance inscribe the
titles, “Ill-destined but Misjudged.”)




LETTER III


 Concerning the virtuous amusements of both old and young.
 The sit-round games. The masterpiece of the divine Li Tang,
 and its reception by all, including that same Herbert.


VENERATED SIRE (whose breadth of mind is so well developed as to take
for granted boundless filial professions, which, indeed, become vapid by
a too frequent reiteration),--

Your amiable inquiry as to how the barbarians pass their time, when not
employed in affairs of commerce or in worshipping their ancestors, has
inspired me to examine the matter more fully. At the same time your
pleasantly-composed aphorism that the interior nature of persons does
not vary with the colour of their eyes, and that if I searched I should
find the old flying kites and the younger kicking feather balls or
working embroidery, according to their sex, does not appear to be
accurately sustained.

The lesser ones, it is true, engage in a variety of sumptuous
handicrafts, such as the scorching of wooden tablets with the semblance
of a pattern, and gouging others with sharpened implements into a crude
relief; depicting birds and flowers upon the surface of plates, rending
leather into shreds, and entwining beaten iron, brass, and copper into a
diversity of most ingenious complications; but when I asked a maiden of
affectionate and domesticated appearance whether she had yet worked her
age-stricken father’s coffin-cloth, she said that the subject was one
upon which she declined to jest, and rapidly involving herself in a
profuse display of emotion, she withdrew, leaving this one aghast.

To enable my mind to retranquillise, I approached a youth
of highly-gilded appearance, and, with many predictions of
self-inferiority, I suggested that we should engage in the stimulating
rivalry of feather ball. When he learned, however, that the diversion
consisted in propelling upwards a feather-trimmed chip by striking it
against the side of the foot, he candidly replied that he was afraid
he had grown out of shuttle-cock, but did not mind, if I was vigorously
inclined, “taking me on for a set of yang-pong.”

Old men here, it is said, do not fly kites, and they affect to despise
catching flies for amusement, although they frequently go fishing.
Struck by this peculiarity, I put it in the form of an inquiry to one
of venerable appearance, why, when at least five score flies were
undeniably before his eyes, he preferred to recline for lengthy periods
by the side of a stream endeavouring to snare creatures of whose
existence he himself had never as yet received any adequate proof.
Doubtless in my contemptible ignorance, however, I used some word
inaccurately, for those who stood around suffered themselves to become
amused, and the one in question replied with no pretence of amiable
condescension that the jest had already been better expressed a hundred
times, and that I would find the behind parts of a printed leaf
called “Punch” in the bookcase. Not being desirous of carrying on
a conversation of which I felt that I had misplaced the most highly
rectified ingredient, I bowed repeatedly, and replied affably that
wisdom ruled his left side and truth his right.

It was upon this same occasion that a young man of unprejudiced
wide-mindedness, taking me aside, asserted that the matter had not been
properly set forth when I was inquiring about kites. Both old and young
men, he continued, frequently endeavoured to fly kites, even in the
involved heart of the city. He had tried once or twice himself, but
never with encouraging success, chiefly, he was told, because his paper
was not good enough. Many people, he added, would not scruple to mislead
me with evasive ambiguity on this one subject owing to an ill-balanced
conception of what constituted true dignity, but he was unwilling
that his countrymen should be thought by mine to be sunk into a deeper
barbarism than actually existed.

His warning was not inopportune. Seated next to this person at a later
period was a maiden from whose agreeably-poised lips had hitherto
proceeded nothing but sincerity and fact. Watching her closely I asked
her, as one who only had a languid interest either one way or the
other, whether her revered father or her talented and richly-apparelled
brothers ever spent their time flying kites about the city. In spite of
a most efficient self-control her colour changed at my words, and her
features trembled for a moment, but quickly reverting to herself she
replied that she thought not; then--as though to subdue my suspicions
more completely--that she was sure they did not, as the kites would
certainly frighten the horses and the appointed watchmen of the street
would not allow it. She confessed, however, with unassumed candour, that
the immediate descendants of her sister were gracefully proficient in
the art.

From this, great and enlightened one, you will readily perceive
how misleading an impression might be carried away by a person
scrupulously-intentioned but not continually looking both ways, when
placed among a people endowed with the uneasy suspicion of the barbarian
and struggling to assert a doubtful refinement. Apart from this, there
has to be taken into consideration their involved process of reasoning,
and the unexpectedly different standards which they apply to every
subject.

At the house of the Maidens Blank, when the evening was not spent in
listening to melodious voices and the harmony of stringed woods, it was
usual to take part in sit-round games of various kinds. (And while it
is on his brush this person would say with commendable pride that a
well-trained musician among us can extort more sound from a hollow
wooden pig, costing only a few cash, than the most skilful here ever
attain on their largest instrument--a highly-lacquered coffin on legs,
filled with bells and hidden springs, and frequently sold for a thousand
taels.)

Upon a certain evening, at the conclusion of one sit-round game which
involved abrupt music, a barrier of chairs, and the exhilarating
possibility of being sat upon by the young and vivacious in their zeal,
a person of the company turned suddenly to the one who is communicating
with you and said enticingly, “Why did Birdcage Walk?”

Not judging from his expression that this was other than a polite
inquiry on a matter which disturbed his repose, I was replying that the
manifestation was undoubtedly the work of a vexatious demon which had
taken up its abode in the article referred to, when another, by my side,
cried aloud, “Because it envied Queen Anne’s Gate”; and without a pause
cast back the question, “Who carved The Poultry?”

In spite of the apparent simplicity of the demand it was received by
all in an attitude of complicated doubt, and this person was considering
whether he might not acquire distinction by replying that such an office
fell by custom to the lot of the more austere Maiden Blank, when the
very inadequate reply, “Mark Lane with St. Mary’s Axe,” was received
with applause and some observations in a half-tone regarding the
identity of the fowl.

By the laws of the sit-round games the one who had last spoken now
proclaimed himself, demanding to know, “Why did Battersea Rise?” but the
involvement was evidently superficial, for the maiden at whose memory
this one’s organs still vibrate ignobly at once replied, “Because it
thought Clapham Common,” in turn inquiring, “What made the Marble Arch?”

Although I would have willingly sacrificed to an indefinite extent to be
furnished with the preconcerted watchword, so that I might have enlarged
myself in the eyes of this consecrated being’s unapproachable esteem,
I had already decided that the competition was too intangible for
one whose thoughts lay in well-defined parallel lines, and it fell to
another to reply, “To hear Salisbury Court.”

This, O my broad-minded ancestor of the first degree--an aimless
challenge coupled with the name of one recognisable spot, replied to by
the haphazard retort of another place, frequently in no way joined to
it, was regarded as an exceptionally fascinating sit-round game by a
company of elderly barbarians!

“What couldn’t Walbrook?” it might be, and “Such Cheapside,” would be
deemed a praiseworthy solution. “When did King’s Bench Walk?” would
be asked, and to reply, “When Gray’s Inn Road,” covered the one with
overpowering acclamation. “Bevis Marks only an Inner Circle at The
Butts; why?” was a demand of such elaborate complexity that (although
this person was lured out of his self-imposed restraint by the silence
of all round, and submerging his intelligence to an acquired level,
unobtrusively suggested, “Because Aylesbury ducks, perchance”) it fell
to the one propounding to announce, “Because St. John’s Wood Shoot-up
Hill.”

Admittedly it is written, “When the shutter is fastened the girdle is
loosened,” but it is as truly said, “Not in the head, nor yet in the
feet, but in the organs of digestion does wisdom reside,” and even in
jesting the middle course of neither an excessive pride nor an absolute
weak-mindedness is to be observed. With what concrete pangs of acute
mental distress would this person ever behold his immaculate progenitor
taking part in a similar sit-round game with an assembly of worthy
mandarins, the one asking questions of meaningless import, as “Why
did they Hangkow?” and another replying in an equal strain of no
consecutiveness, “In order to T’in Tung!”

At length a person who is spoken of as having formerly been the captain
of a band of warriors turned to me with an unsuspected absence of
ferocity and said, “Your countrymen are very proficient in the art
of epigram, are they not, Mr. Kong? Will you not, in turn, therefore,
favour us with an example?” Whereupon several maidens exclaimed with
engaging high temper, “Oh yes; do ask us some funny Chinese riddles, Mr.
Kong!”

“Assuredly there are among us many classical instances of the light
sayings which require matching,” I replied, gratified that I should have
the opportunity of showing their superiority. “One, harmonious
beyond the blend of challenge and retort, is as follows--‘The Phoenix
embroidered upon the side of the shoe: When the shoe advances the
Phoenix leaps forward.’”

“Oh!” cried several of the maidens, and from the nature of their glances
it might reasonably be gathered that already they began to recognise the
inferiority of their own sayings.

“Is that the question, or the answer, or both?” asked a youth of
unfledged maturity, and to hide their conscious humiliation several
persons allowed their faces to melt away.

“That which has been expressed,” replied this person with an ungrudging
toleration, “is the first or question portion of the contrast. The
answer is that which will be supplied by your honourable condescension.”

“But,” interposed one of the maidens, “it isn’t really a question, you
know, Mr. Kong.”

“In a way of regarding it, it may be said to be question, inasmuch as it
requires an answer to establish the comparison. The most pleasing answer
is that which shall be dissimilar in idea, and yet at the same time
maintain the most perfect harmony of parallel thought,” I replied. “Now
permit your exceptional minds to wander in a forest of similitudes: ‘The
Phoenix embroidered upon the side of the shoe: When the shoe advances
the Phoenix leaps forward.’”

“Oh, if that’s all you want,” said the one Herbert, who by an ill
destiny chanced to be present, “‘The red-hot poker held before the Cat’s
nose: When the poker advances the Cat leaps backwards.’”

“Oh, very good!” cried several of those around, “of course it naturally
would. Is that right, Mr. Kong?”

“If the high-souled company is satisfied, then it must be, for there is
no conclusive right or wrong--only an unending search for that which
is most gem-set and resourceful,” replied this person, with an
ever-deepening conviction of no enthusiasm towards the sit-round game.
“But,” he added, resolved to raise for a moment the canopy of a mind
swan-like in its crystal many-sidedness, and then leave them to their
own ineptitude, “for five centuries nothing has been judged equal to
the solution offered by Li Tang. At the time he was presented with
a three-sided banner of silk with the names of his eleven immediate
ancestors embroidered upon it in seven colours, and his own name is
still handed down in imperishable memory.”

“Oh, do tell us what it was,” cried many. “It must have been clever.”

“‘The Dragon painted upon the face of the fan: When the fan is shaken
the Dragon flies upwards,’” replied this person.

It cannot be denied that this was received with an attitude of
respectful melancholy strikingly complimentary to the wisdom of the
gifted Li Tang. But whether it may be that the time was too short to
assimilate the more subtle delicacies of the saying, or whether the
barbarian mind is inherently devoid of true balance, this person was
panged most internally to hear one say to another as he went out, “Do
you know, I really think that Herbert’s was much the better answer of
the two--more realistic, and what you might expect at the pantomime.” *

A like inability to grasp with a clear and uninvolved vision, permeates
not only the triviality of a sit-round game but even the most important
transactions of existence.

Shortly after his arrival in the Island, this person was initiated
by the widely-esteemed Quang-Tsun into the private life of one whose
occupation was that of a Law-giver, where he frequently drank tea
on terms of mutual cordiality. Upon such an occasion he was one day
present, conversing with the lesser ones of the household--the head
thereof being absent, setting forth the Law in the Temple--when one of
the maidens cried out with amiable vivacity, “Why, Mr. Kong, you say
such consistently graceful things of the ladies you have met over here,
that we shall expect you to take back an English wife with you. But
perhaps you are already married in China?”

“The conclusion is undeviating in its accuracy,” replied this person,
unable to evade the allusion. “To Ning, Hia-Fa and T’ain Yen, as the
matter stands.”

“Ning Hia-Fa An T’ain Yen!” exclaimed the wife of the Law-giver
pleasantly. “What an important name. Can you pardon our curiosity and
tell us what she is like?”

“Ning, Hia-Fa AND T’ain Yen,” repeated this person, not submitting to
be deprived of the consequence of two wives without due protest. “Three
names, three wives. Three very widely separated likes.”

At this in no way boastfully uttered statement the agreeably outlined
surface of the faces around variated suddenly, the effect being one
which I have frequently observed in the midst of my politest expressions
of felicity. For a moment, indeed, I could not disguise from myself that
the one who had made the inquiry stretched forth her lotus-like hand
towards the secret spring by which it is customary to summon the
attending slaves from the underneath parts, but restraining herself
with the manner of one who would desire to make less of a thing that it
otherwise might seem, she turned to me again.

“How nice!” she murmured. “What a pity you did not bring them all with
you, Mr. Kong. They would have been a great acquisition.”

“Yet it must be well weighed,” I replied, not to be out-complimented
touching one another, “that here they would have met so many fine and
superior gentlemen that they might have become dissatisfied with my less
than average prepossessions.”

“I wonder if they did not think of that in your case, and refuse to let
you come,” said one of the maidens.

“The various persons must not be regarded as being on their all fours,”
 I replied, anxious that there should be no misunderstanding on this
point. “They, of course, reside within one inner chamber, but there
would be no duplicity in this one adding indefinitely to the number.”

“Of course not; how silly of me!” exclaimed the maiden. “What splendid
musical evenings you can have. But tell me, Mr. Kong (ought it not to be
Messrs. Kong, mamma?), if a girl married you here would she be legally
married to you in China?”

“Oh yes,” replied this person positively.

“But could you not, by your own laws, have the marriage set aside
whenever you wished?”

“Assuredly,” I admitted. “It is so appointed.”

“Then how could she be legally married?” she persisted, with really
unbecoming suspicion.

“Legally married, legally unmarried,” replied this person, quite
distressed within himself at not being able to understand the difficulty
besetting her. “All perfectly legal and honourably observed.”

“I think, Gwendoline--” said the one of authority, and although the
matter was no further expressed, by an instinct which he was powerless
to avert, this person at once found himself rising with ceremonious
partings.

Not desiring that the obstacle should remain so inadequately swept
away, I have turned my presumptuous footsteps in the direction of the
Law-giver’s house on several later occasions, but each time the word of
the slave guarding the door has been that they of the household,
down even to those of the most insignificant degree of kinship, have
withdrawn to a distant and secluded spot.

With renewed assurances that the enterprise is being gracefully
conducted, however ill-digested and misleading these immature
compositions may appear.

KONG HO.




LETTER IV


 Concerning a desire to expatiate upon subjects of
 philosophical importance and its no accomplishment. Three
 examples of the mental concavity sunk into by these
 barbarians. An involved episode which had the outward
 appearance of being otherwise than what it was.


VENERATED SIRE (whose genial liberality on all necessary occasions
is well remembered by this person in his sacrifices, with the titles
“Benevolent” and “Open-sleeved”),--

I had it in my head at one time to tell you somewhat of the Classics
most reverenced in this country, of the philosophical opinions which
prevail, and to enlighten you generally upon certain other subjects of
distinguished eminence. As the deities arranged, however, it chanced
that upon my way to a reputable quarter of the city where the actuality
of these matters can be learnt with the least evasion, my footsteps were
drawn aside by an incident which now permeates my truth-laden brush to
the exclusion of all else.

But in the first place, if it be permitted for a thoroughly
untrustworthy son to take so presumptuous a liberty with an unvaryingly
sagacious father, let this one entreat you to regard everything he
writes in a very wide-headed spirit of looking at the matter from all
round. My former letters will have readily convinced you that much that
takes place here, even among those who can afford long finger-nails,
would not be tolerated in Yuen-ping, and in order to avoid the suspicion
that I am suffering from a serious injury to the head, or have become
a prey to a conflicting demon, it will be necessary to continue an
even more highly-sustained tolerant alertness. This person himself has
frequently suffered the ill effects of rashly assuming that because he
is conducting the adventure in a prepossessing spirit his efforts will
be honourably received, as when he courteously inquired the ages of a
company of maidens into whose presence he was led, and complimented the
one whom he was desirous of especially gratifying by assuring her that
she had every appearance of being at least twice the nine-and-twenty
years to which she modestly laid claim.

Upon another occasion I entered a barber’s stall, and finding it
oppressively hot within, I commanded the attendant to carry a reclining
stool into the street and there shave my lower limbs and anoint my head.
As he hesitated to obey--doubtless on account of the trivial labour
involved--I repeated my words in a tone of fuller authority, holding out
the inducement of a just payment when he complied, and assuring him that
he would certainly be dragged before the nearest mandarin and tortured
if he held his joints stiffly. At this he evidently understood his
danger, for obsequiously protesting that he was only a barber of very
mean attainments, and that his deformed utensils were quite inadequate
for the case, he very courteously directed me in inquire for a public
chariot bound for a quarter called Colney Hatch (the place of commerce,
it is reasonable to infer, of the higher class barbers), and, seating
myself in it, instruct the attendant to put me down at the large gates,
where they possessed every requisite appliance, and also would, if
desirable, shave my head also. Here the incident assumes a more doubtful
guise, for, notwithstanding the admitted politeness of the one who
spoke, each of those to whom I subsequently addressed myself on the
subject, presented to me a face quite devoid of encouragement. While
none actually pointed out the vehicle I sought, many passed on in a
state of inward contemplation without replying, and some--chiefly the
attendants of other chariots of a similar kind--replied in what I deemed
to be a spirit of elusive metaphor, as he who asserted that such a
conveyance must be sought for at a point known intimately as the Aldgate
Pump, whence it started daily at half-past the thirteenth gong-stroke;
and another, who maintained that I had no prospect of reaching the
desired spot until I secured the services of one of a class of female
attendants who wear flowing blue robes in order to indicate that they
are prepared to encounter and vanquish any emergency in life. To make no
elaborate pretence in the matter this person may definitely admit that
he never did reach the place in question, nor--in spite of a diligent
search in which he has encountered much obloquy--has he yet found any
barber sufficiently well equipped to undertake the detail.

Even more recently I suffered the unmerited rebuke of the superficial
through performing an act of deferential politeness. Learning that the
enlightened and magnanimous sovereign of this country was setting out on
a journey I stationed myself in the forefront of those who stood before
his palace, intending to watch such parts of the procession as might be
fitly witnessed by one of my condition. When these had passed, and the
chariot of the greatest approached, I respectfully turned my back to
the road with a propitiatory gesture, as of one who did not deem himself
worthy even to look upon a being of such majestic rank and acknowledged
excellence. This delicate action, by some incredible process of mental
obliquity, was held by those around to be a deliberate insult, if not
even a preconcerted signal, of open treachery, and had not a heaven-sent
breeze at that moment carried the hat of a very dignified bystander into
the upper branches of an opportune tree, and successfully turned aside
the attention of the assembly into a most immoderate exhibition of utter
loss of gravity, I should undoubtedly have been publicly tortured, if
not actually torn to pieces.

But the incident first alluded to was of an even more
elaborately-contrived density than these, and some of the details are
still unrolled before the keenest edge of this one’s inner perception.
Nevertheless, all is now set down in unbroken exactness for your
impartial judgment.

At the time of this exploit I had only ventured out on a few occasions,
and then, save those recorded, to no considerable extent; for it had
already become obvious that the enterprises in which I persistently
became involved never contributed to my material prosperity, and the
disappointment of finding that even when I could remember nine words
of a sentence in their language none of the barbarians could understand
even so much as a tenth of my own, further cast down my enthusiasm.

On the day which has been the object of this person’s narration from
the first, he set out to become more fully instructed in the subjects
already indicated, and proceeding in a direction of which he had no
actual knowledge, he soon found himself in a populous and degraded
quarter of the city. Presently, to his reasonable astonishment, he saw
before him at a point where two ill-constructed thoroughfares met, a
spacious and important building, many-storied in height, ornamented
with a profusion of gold and crystal, marble and precious stones,
and displaying from a tall pole the three-hued emblem of undeniable
authority. A never-ending stream of people passed in and out by the
numerous doors; the strains of expertly wielded instruments could be
distinctly heard inside, and the warm odour of a most prepossessing
spiced incense permeated the surroundings. “Assuredly,” thought the
person who is now recording the incident, “this is one of the Temples
of barbarian worship”; and to set all further doubt at rest he saw in
letters of gilt splendour a variety of praiseworthy and appropriate
inscriptions, among which he read and understood, “Excellent,” “Fine
Old,” “Well Matured,” “Spirits only of the choicest quality within,”
 together with many other invocations from which he could not wrest the
hidden significance, as “Old Vatted,” “Barclay’s Entire,” “An Ordinary
at One,” and the like.

By this time an impressive gathering had drawn around, and from its
manner of behaving conveyed the suspicion that an entertainment or
manifestation of some kind was confidently awaited. To disperse so
outrageous a misconception this person was on the point of withdrawing
himself when he chanced to see, over the principal door of the Temple,
a solid gold figure of colossal magnitude, represented as crowned with
leaves and tendrils, and holding in his outstretched hands a gigantic,
and doubtless symbolic, bunch of grapes. “This,” I said to myself, “is
evidently the tutelary deity of the place, so displayed to receive the
worship of the passer-by.” With the discovery a thought of the most
irreproachable benevolence possessed me. “Why should not this person,” I
reflected, “gain the unstinted approbation of those barbarians” (who by
this time completely encircled me in) “by doing obeisance towards their
deity, and by the same act delicately and inoffensively rebuke them for
their own too-frequent intolerable attitude towards the susceptibilities
of others? As an unprejudiced follower, in his own land, of the systems
of Confucius, Lao-tse, and Buddha, this person already recognises the
claims of seventeen thousand nine hundred and thirty-three deities of
various grades, so that the addition of one more to that number can be
a heresy of very trivial expiation.” Inspired by these honourable
sentiments, therefore, I at once prostrated myself on the ground, and,
amid a silence of really illimitable expectation, I began to kow-tow
repeatedly with ceremonious precision.

At this display of charitable broadmindedness an approving shout went
up on all sides. Thus encouraged I proceeded to kow-tow with even more
unceasing assiduousness, and presently words of definite encouragement
mingled with the shout. “Do not flag in your amiable disinterestedness,
Kong Ho,” I whispered in my ear, “and out of your well-sustained
endurance may perchance arise a cordial understanding, and ultimately
a remunerative alliance between two distinguished nations.” Filled with
this patriotic hope I did not suffer my neck to stiffen, and doubtless I
would have continued the undertaking as long as the sympathetic persons
who hemmed me in signified their refined approval, when suddenly the cry
was raised, “Look out, here comes the coppers!”

This, O my venerable-headed father, I at once guessed to be the
announcement heralding the collecting-bowl which some over-zealous
bystander was preparing to pass round on my behalf, doubtless under the
impression--so obtuse in grasping the true relationship of events are
many of the barbarians--that I was a wandering monk, displaying my
reverence for the purpose of mendicancy. Not wishing to profit by this
offensive misapprehension, I was preparing to rise, when a hand was
unceremoniously laid upon my shoulder, and turning round I saw behind me
one of the official watch--a class of men so powerful that at a gesture
from their uplifted hands even the fiercest untamed horse will not
infrequently stand upon its hind legs in mute submission.

“Early morning salutations,” I said pleasantly, though somewhat involved
in speech by my exertion (for these persons are ever to be treated
with discriminating courtesy). “Prosperity to your house, O energetic
street-watcher, and a thousand grandsons to worship their illustrious
ancestor.”

“Thanks,” he replied concisely. “I’m a single man. As yet. Now then,
will you make a way there? Can you stand?”

“Stand?” repeated this person, at once recognising one of the important
words of inner meaning concerning which he had been initiated by the
versatile Quang-Tsun. “Certainly this person will not hesitate to
establish his footing if the exaction is thought to be desirable.
Let us, therefore, bend our steps in the direction of a tea-house of
unquestionable propriety.”

“You’ve bent your steps into quite enough tea-houses, as you call them,
for one day,” replied the official with evasive meaning, at the same
time assisting me to rise (for it need not be denied that the restrained
position had made me for the moment incapable of a self-sustaining
effort). “Look what you’ve done.”

At the direction of his glance I cast my eyes along the street, east and
west, and for the first time I became aware that what I had last seen as
a reasonable gathering had now taken the proportions of an innumerable
multitude which filled the entire space of the thoroughfare, while
others covered the roofs above and protruded themselves from every
available window. In our own land the interspersal of umbrellas, musical
instruments, and banners, with an occasional firework, would have given
a greater animation to the scene; but with this exception I have never
taken part in a more impressive and well-extended procession. Even
while I looked, the helmets of other official watchers appeared in the
distance, as immature junks upon the storm-tossed Whang-Hai, apparently
striving fruitlessly to reach us.

As I was by no means sure what attitude was expected of me, I smiled
with an all-embracing approval, and signified to the one at my side, by
way of passing the time pleasurably together, that the likelihood of his
nimble-witted friends reaching us with unruffled garments was remote in
the extreme.

“Don’t you let that worry you, Li Hung Chang,” he said, in a tone that
had the appearance of being outside itself around a deeper and more
bitter significance; “if we get out again with any garments at all it
won’t be your fault. Why, you--well, YOU ought to have been put on the
Black List long ago, by rights.”

This, exalted one, although I have not yet been able to learn the exact
dignity of it from any of the books of civil honours, is undoubtedly
a mark of signal attainment, conferred upon the few for distinguishing
themselves by some particular capacity; as our Double Dragon, for
instance. Anxious to learn something of the privileges of the rank from
one who evidently was not without influence in the bestowal, and not
unwilling to show him that I was by no means of low-caste descent, I
said to the official, “In his own country one of this person’s ancestors
wore the Decoration of the Yellow Scabbard, which entitled him to be
carried in his chair up to the gate of the Forbidden Palace before
descending to touch the ground. Is this Order of the Black List of a
like purport?”

“You’re right,” he said, “it is. In this country it entitles you to be
carried right inside the door at Bow Street without ever touching the
ground. Look out! Now we shall not--”

At that moment what this person at first assumed to be a floral tribute,
until he saw that not only the entire plant, but the earthenware jar
also were attached, struck the official upon the helmet, whereupon,
drawing a concealed club, he ceased speaking.

How the entertainment was conducted to such a development this person is
totally inadequate to express; but in an incredibly short space of time
the scene became one of most entrancing variety. From every visible
point around the air became filled with commodities which--though
doubtless without set intention--fittingly represented the arts,
manufactures, and natural history of this resourceful country, all cast
in prolific abundance at the feet of the official and myself, although
the greater part inevitably struck our heads and bodies before reaching
them. Beyond our immediate circle, as it may be expressed, the crowd
never ceased to press forward with resistless activity, and among
it could be seen occasionally the official watchmen advancing
self-reliantly, though frequently without helmets, and, not less often,
the helmets advancing without the official watchmen. To add to the
acknowledged interest, every person present was proclaiming his views
freely on a diversity of subjects, and above all could be heard the
clear notes of the musical instruments by which the officials sought
to encourage one another in their extremity, and to deaden the cries of
those whom they outclubbed.

Despite this person’s repeated protests that the distinction was too
excessive, he was plucked from hand to hand irresistibly among those
around, losing a portion of his ill-made attire at each step, so
agreeably anxious were all to detain him. Just when the exploit seemed
likely to have a disagreeable ending, however, he was thrust heavily
against a door which yielded, and at once barring it behind him, he
passed across the open space into which it led, along a passage between
two walls, and thence through an involved labyrinth and beneath the
waters of a canal into a wood of attractive seclusion. Here this person
remained, spending the time in a profitable meditation, until the light
withdrew and the great sky lantern had ascended. Then he cautiously
crept forth, and after some further trivial episodes which chiefly
concern the obstinate-headed slave guarding the outer door of a
tea-house, an unintelligent maiden in the employment of one vending
silk-embroidered raiment, the mercenary controller of a two-wheeled
chariot and the sympathetic and opportune arrival of a person seated
upon a funeral car, he succeeded in reaching the place of his abode.

With unalterable affection and a material request that an unstinted
adequacy of new garments may be sent by a sure and speedy hand.

KONG HO.




LETTER V


 Concerning the neglect of ancestors and its discreditable
 consequences. Two who state the matter definitely.
 Concerning the otherside way of looking at things and the
 self-contradictory bearing of the maiden Florence.


VENERATED SIRE,--A discovery of overwhelming malignity oppresses me. In
spite of much baffling ambiguity and the frequent evasion of conscious
guilt, there can be no longer any reasonable doubt that these barbarians
DO NOT WORSHIP THEIR ANCESTORS!

Hitherto the matter had rested in my mind as an uneasy breath of
suspicion, agitated from time to time by countless indications that
such a possibility might, indeed, exist in a condensed form, but too
inauspiciously profane to be contemplated in the altogether. Thus, when
in the company of the young this person has walked about the streets
of the city, he may at length have said, “Truly, out of your amiable
condescension, you have shown me a variety of entrancing scenes. Let
us now in turn visit the tombs of your ancestors, to the end that I may
transmit fitting gifts to their spirits and discharge a few propitious
fireworks as a greeting.” Yet in no case has this well-intentioned
offer been agilely received, one asserting that he did not know
the resting-place of the tombs in question, a second that he had no
ancestors, a third that Kensal Green was not an entrancing spot for
a wet afternoon, a fourth that he would see them removed to a greater
distance first, another that he drew the line at mafficking in a
cemetery, and the like. These things, it may occur to your omniscience,
might in themselves have been conclusive, yet the next reference to the
matter would perhaps be tending to a more alluring hope.

“To-morrow,” a person has remarked in the hearing of this one, “I go
to the Stratford which is upon the Avon, and without a pause I shall
prostrate myself intellectually before the immortal Shakespeare’s tomb
and worship his unequalled memory.”

“The intention is benevolently conceived,” I remarked. “Yet has he no
descendants, this same Shakespeare, that the conciliation of his spirit
must be left to chance?”

When he assured me that this calamity had come about, I would have added
a richly-gilded brick from my store for transmission also, in the hope
that the neglected and capricious shadow would grant me an immunity from
its resentful attention, but the one in question raised a barrier of
dissent. If I wished to adorn a tomb, he added (evading the deeper
significance of the act), there was that of Goldsmith within its Temple,
upon which many impressionable maidens from across the Bitter Waters of
the West make it a custom to deposit chaplets of verses, in the hope
of seeing the offering chronicled in the papers; and in the Open Space
called Trafalgar there were the images of a great captain who led many
junks to victory and the Emperor of a former dynasty, where doubtless
the matter could be arranged; but the surrounding had by this time
become too involved, and this person had no alternative but to smile
symmetrically and reply that his words were indeed opals falling from a
topaz basin.

Later in the day, being desirous of becoming instructed more definitely,
I addressed myself to a venerable person who makes clean the passage of
the way at a point not far distant.

“If you have no sons to extend your industrious line,” I said, when he
had revealed this fact to me, “why do you not adopt one to that end?”

With narrow-minded covetousness, he replied that nowadays he had enough
to do to keep himself, and that it would be more reasonable to get some
one to adopt HIM.

“But,” I exclaimed, ignoring this ill-timed levity, “who, when you
have Passed Beyond, will worship you and transmit to your spirit the
necessities of life?”

“Governor,” he replied, using the term of familiar dignity, “I’ve made
shift without being worshipped for five and sixty years, and it worries
me a sight more to know who will transmit to my body the necessities of
life until I HAVE Passed Beyond.”

“The final consequences of your self-opinionated carelessness,” this
person continued, “will be that your neglected and unprovided shadow,
finding itself no longer acceptable to the society of the better
class demons, will wander forth, and allying itself in despair to the
companionship of a band of outcasts like itself, will be driven to dwell
in unclean habitations and to subsist on the uncertain bounty of the
charitable.”

“Very likely,” replied the irredeemable person before me. “I can’t help
its troubles. I have to do all that myself as it is.”

Doubtless this fanaticism contains the secret of the ease with which
these barbarians have possessed themselves of the greater part of the
earth, and have even planted their assertive emblems on one or two spots
in our own Flowery Kingdom. What, O my esteemed parent, what can a brave
but devout and demon-fearing nation do when opposed to a people who are
quite prepared to die without first leaving an adequate posterity to
tend their shrines and offer incense? Assuredly, as a neighbouring
philosopher once had occasion to remark, using for his purpose a
metaphor so technically-involved that I must leave the interpretation
until we meet, “It may be war, but it isn’t cricket.”

The inevitable outcome, naturally, is that the Island must be the
wandering-place of myriads of spirits possessing no recognised standing,
and driven by want--having none to transmit them offerings--to the most
degraded subterfuges. It is freely admitted that there is scarcely an
ancient building not the abode of one or more of these abandoned demons,
doubtless well-disposed in the first instance, and capable of becoming
really beneficent Forces until they were driven to despair by obstinate
neglect. A society of very honourable persons (to which this one has
unobtrusively contributed a gift), exists for the purpose of searching
out the most distressing and meritorious cases among them, and removing
them, where possible, to a more congenial spot. The remarkable fact,
to this person’s mind, is, that with the air and every available
space around absolutely packed with demons (as certainly must be the
prevailing state of things), the manifestations of their malignity and
vice are, if anything, rather less evident here than in our own favoured
country, where we do all in our power to satisfy their wants.

That same evening I found myself seated next to a maiden of
prepossessing vivacity, who was spoken of as being one of a kindred
but not identical race. Filled with the incredible profanity of those
around, and hoping to find among a nation so alluringly high-spirited
a more congenial elevation of mind, I at length turned to her and said,
“Do not regard the question as one of unworthy curiosity, for this
person’s inside is white and funereal with his fears; but do you, of
your allied race, worship your ancestors?”

The maiden spent a moment in conscientious thought. “No, Mr. Kong,” she
replied, with a most commendable sigh of unfeigned regret, “I can’t say
that we do. I guess it’s because we’re too new. Mine, now, only go back
two generations, and they were mostly in lard. If they were old and
baronial it might be different, but I can’t imagine myself worshipping
an ancestor in lard.” (This doubtless refers to some barbaric method of
embalming.)

“And your wide and enlightened countrymen?” I asked, unable to restrain
a passion of pure-bred despair. “Do they also so regard the obligation?”

“I am afraid so,” replied the maiden, with an honourable indication
towards my emotion. “But of course when a girl marries into the European
aristocracy, she and all her folk worship her husband’s ancestors, until
every one about is fairly dizzy with the subject.”

It is largely owing to the graceful and virtuous conversation of these
lesser ones that this person’s knowledge of the exact position which
the ceremonial etiquette of the country demands on various occasions is
becoming so proficiently enlarged. It is true that they of my own sex do
not hesitate to inquire with penetrating assiduousness into certain of
the manners and customs of our land, but these for the most part do
not lead to a conversation in any way profitable to my discreeter
understanding. Those of the inner chamber, on the other hand, while
not scrupling to question me on the details of dress, the braiding and
gumming of the hair, the style and variety of the stalls of merchants,
the wearing of jade, gold, and crystal ornaments and flowers about
the head, smoking, and other matters affecting our lesser ones, very
magnanimously lead my contemplation back to a more custom-established
topic if by any hap in my ambitious ignorance I outstep it.

In such a manner it chanced on a former occasion that I sat side by side
with a certain maiden awaiting the return of others who had withdrawn
for a period. The season was that of white rains, and the fire being
lavishly extended about the grate we had harmoniously arranged ourselves
before it, while this person, at the repeated and explicit encouragement
of the maiden, spoke openly of such details of the inner chamber as he
has already indicated.

“Is it true, Mr. Ho” (thus the maiden, being unacquainted with the
actual facts, consistently addressed me), “that ladies’ feet are
relentlessly compressed until they finally assume the proportions and
appearance of two bulbs?” and as she spoke she absent-mindedly regarded
her own slippers, which were out-thrust somewhat to receive the action
of the fire.

“It is a matter which cannot reasonably be denied,” I replied; “and
it is doubtless owing to this effect that they are designated ‘Golden
Lilies.’ Yet when this observance has been slowly and painfully
accomplished, the extremities in question are not less small but
infinitely less graceful than the select and naturally-formed pair which
this person sees before him.” And at the ingeniously-devised compliment
(which, not to become large-headed in self-imagination, it must be
admitted was revealed to me as available for practically all occasions
by the really invaluable Quang-Tsun), I bowed unremittingly.

“O, Mr. Ho!” exclaimed the maiden, and paused abruptly at the sound of
her words, as though they were inept.

“In many other ways a comparison equally irreproachable to the exalted
being at my side might be sought out,” I continued, suddenly forming
the ill-destined judgment that I was no less competent than the more
experienced Quang-Tsun to contrive delicate offerings of speech. “Their
hair is rope like in its lack of spontaneous curve, their eyes as
deficient in lustre as a half-shuttered window; their hands are
exceedingly inferior in colour, and both on the left side, as it may be
expressed; their legs--” but at this point the maiden drew herself so
hastily into herself that I had no alternative but to conclude that
unless I reverted in some way the enterprise was in peril of being
inharmoniously conducted.

“Mr. Ho,” said the maiden, after contemplating her inward thoughts for
a moment, “you are a foreigner, and you cannot be expected to know by
instinct what may and what may not be openly expressed in this country.
Therefore, although the obligation is not alluring, I think it kinder
to tell you that the matters which formed the subject of your last words
are never to be referred to.”

At this rebuke I again bowed persistently, for it did not appear
reasonable to me that I could in any other way declare myself without
violating the imposed command.

“Not only are they never openly referred to,” continued the maiden,
who in spite of the declared no allurement of the subject did not seem
disposed to abandon it at once, “but among the most select they are,
by unspoken agreement, regarded as ‘having no actual existence,’ as you
yourself would say.”

“Yet,” protested this person, somewhat puzzled, “to one who has
witnessed the highly-achieved attitudes of those within your Halls of
Harmony, and in an unyielding search for knowledge has addressed himself
even to the advertisement pages of the ladies’ papers--”

The maiden waved her hand magnanimously. “In your land, as you have told
me, there are many things, not really existing, which for politeness you
assume to be. In a like but converse manner this is to be so regarded.”

I thanked her voluminously. “The etiquette of this country is as
involved as the spoken tongue,” I said, “for both are composed chiefly
of exceptions to a given rule. It was formerly impressed upon this
person, as a guiding principle, that that which is unseen is not to be
discussed; yet it is not held in disrepute to allude to so intimate and
secluded an organ as the heart, for no further removed than yesterday he
heard the deservedly popular sea-lieutenant in the act of declaring to
you, upon his knees, that you were utterly devoid of such a possession.”

At this inoffensively-conveyed suggestion, the fire opposite had all the
appearance of suddenly reflecting itself into the maiden’s face with a
most engaging concentration, while at the same time she stamped her foot
in ill-concealed rage.

“You’ve been listening at the door!” she cried impetuously, “and I shall
never forgive you.”

“To no extent,” I declared hastily (for although I had indeed been
listening at the door, it appeared, after the weight which she set
upon the incident, more honourable that I should deny it in order to
conciliate her mind). “It so chanced that for the moment this person
had forgotten whether the handle he was grasping was of the push-out or
turn-in variety, and in the involvement a few words of no particular or
enduring significance settled lightly upon his perception.

“In that case,” she replied in high-souled liberality, while her eyes
scintillated towards me with a really all-overpowering radiance, “I will
forgive you.”

“We have an old but very appropriate saying, ‘To every man the voice of
one maiden carries further than the rolling of thunder,’” I remarked
in a significantly restrained tone; for, although conscious that the
circumstance was becoming more menace-laden than I had any previous
intention, I found myself to be incapable of extrication. “Florence--”

“Oh,” she exclaimed quickly, raising her polished hand with an
undeniable gesture of reproof, “you must not call me by my christian
name, Mr. Ho.”

“Yet,” replied this person, with a confessedly stubborn inelegance, “you
call me by the name of Ho.”

Her eyes became ox-like in an utter absence of almond outline. “Yes,”
 she said gazing, “but that--that is not your christian name, is it?”

“In a position of speaking--this one being as a matter of fact a
discreditable follower of the sublime Confucius--it may be so regarded,”
 I answered, “inasmuch as it is the milk-name of childhood.”

“But you always put it last,” she urged.

“Assuredly,” I replied. “Being irrevocably born with the family name of
Kong, it is thought more reasonable that that should stand first. After
that, others are attached as the various contingencies demand it, as Ho
upon participating in the month-age feast, the book-name of Tsin at a
later period, Paik upon taking a degree, and so forth.”

“I am very sorry, Mr. Kong,” said the maiden, adding, with what at
the time certainly struck this person as shallow-witted prejudice. “Of
course it is really quite your own fault for being so tospy-turvily
arranged in every way. But, to return to the subject, why should not one
speak of one’s heart?”

“Because,” replied this person, colouring deeply, and scarcely able to
control his unbearable offence that so irreproachably-moulded a creature
should openly refer to the detail, “because it is a gross and unrefined
particular, much more internal and much less pleasantly-outlined
than those extremities whose spoken equivalent shall henceforth be an
abandoned word from my lips.”

“But, in any case, it is not the actual organ that one infers,”
 protested the maiden. “As the seat of the affections, passions, virtues,
and will, it is the conventional emblem of every thought and emotion.”

“By no means,” I cried, forgetting in the face of so heterodox an
assertion that it would be well to walk warily at every point. “That is
the stomach.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the maiden, burying her face in a gracefully-perfumed
remnant of lace, to so overwhelming a degree that for the moment I
feared she might become involved in the dizzy falling. “Never, by any
mischance, use that word again the society of the presentable, Mr.
Kong.”

“The ceremonial usage of my own land of the Heavenly Dynasty is
proverbially elaborate,” I said, with a gesture of self-abasement, “but
in comparison with yours it may be regarded as an undeviating walk when
opposed to a stately and many-figured dance. Among the company of the
really excessively select (in which must ever be included the one whom
I am now addressing), it becomes difficult for an outcast of my
illimitable obtuseness to move to one side or the other without putting
his foot into that.”

“Oh no,” exclaimed the maiden, in fragrant encouragement, “I think you
are getting on very nicely, Mr. Kong, and one does not look for absolute
conformance from a foreigner--especially one who is so extremely
foreign. If I can help you with anything--of course I could not even
speak as I have done to an ordinary stranger, but with one of a distant
race it seems different--if I can tell you anything that will save
you--”

“You are all-exalted,” I replied, with seemly humility, “and virtue and
wisdom press out your temples on either side. Certainly, since I have
learned that the heart is so poetically regarded, I have been assailed
by a fear lest other organs which I have hitherto despised might be used
in a similar way. Now, as regards liver--”

“It is only used with bacon,” replied the maiden, rising abruptly.

“Kidneys?” suggested this person diffidently, really anxious to detain
her footsteps, although from her expression it did not rest assured that
the incident was taking an actually auspicious movement.

“I don’t think you need speak of those except at breakfast,” she said;
“but I hear the others returning, and I must really go to dress for
dinner.”

Among the barbarians many keep books wherein to inscribe their deep and
beautiful thoughts. This person had therefore provided himself with
one also, and, drawing it forth, he now added to a page of many other
interesting compositions: “Maidens of immaculate refinement do not
hesitate to admit before a person of a different sex that they are on
the point of changing their robes. The liver is in some intricate way
an emblem representing bacon, or together with it the two stand for
a widely differing analogy. Among those of the highest exclusiveness
kidneys are never alluded to after the tenth gong-stroke of the
morning.”

With a sincerely ingrained trust that the scenes of dignity, opulence,
and wisdom, set forth in these superficial letters, are not unsettling
your intellect and causing you to yearn for a fuller existence.

KONG HO.




LETTER VI


 Concerning this person’s well-sustained efforts to discover
 further demons. The behaviour of those invoked on two
 occasions.


VENERATED SIRE,--In an early letter I made some reference to a variety
of demon invoked by certain of the barbarians. As this matter aroused
your congenial interest, I have since privately bent my mind incessantly
to the discovery of others; but this has been by no means easy, for,
touching the more intimate details of the subject, the barbarians
frequently maintain a narrow-minded suspicion. Many whom I have
approached feign to become amused or have evaded a deliberate answer
under the subterfuge of a jest; yet, whenever I would have lurked by
night in their temples or among the enclosed spaces of their tombs to
learn more, at a given signal one in authority has approached me with
anxiety and mistrust engraved upon his features, and, disregarding my
unassuming protest that I would remain alone in a contemplative reverie,
has signified that so devout an exercise is contrary to their written
law.

On one occasion only did this person seem to hold himself poised on the
very edge of a fuller enlightenment. This was when, in the venerable
company of several benevolent persons, he was being taken from place to
place to see the more important buildings, and to observe the societies
of artificers labouring at their crafts. The greater part of the day had
already been spent in visiting temples, open spaces reserved to children
and those whose speech, appearance, and general manner of behaving
make it desirable that they should be set apart from the contact of the
impressionable, halls containing relics and emblems of the past,
places of no particular size or attraction but described as being of
unparalleled historic interest, and the stalls of the more reputable
venders of merchandise.

Doubtless, with observing so many details of a conflicting nature,
this person’s discriminating faculties had become obscured, but towards
evening he certainly understood that we sought the company of an
assembly of those who had been selected from all the Empire to pronounce
definitely upon matters of supreme import. The building before which our
chariot stopped had every appearance of being worthy of so exceptional a
gathering, and with a most affluent joy that I should at last be able to
glean a decisive pronouncement, I evaded those who had accompanied
me, and, mingling self-reliantly with the throng inside, I quickly
surrounded myself with many of the wisest-looking, and begged that they
would open their heads freely and express their innermost opinions upon
the subject of demons of all kinds.

Although I had admittedly hoped that these persons would not conceal
themselves behind the wings of epigram or intangible prevarication, I
was far from being prepared for the candour with which they greeted me,
and although by long usage I am reasonably unconcerned at the proximity
of any of our own recognised genii, it is not to be denied that my
organs of ferocity grew small and unstable at the revelations.

From their words it appeared that the spot on which we stood had
long been the recognised centre and meeting-place for every class of
abandoned and objectionable spirit of the universe. Not only this, but
several of the persons who had gathered around were confidently pointed
out as the earthly embodiment of various diabolical Forces, while others
cheerfully admitted that they themselves were the shadows of certain
illustrious ones who had long Passed Above, and all united in declaring
that those who moved among them wearing the distinction of a dark blue
uniform were Evil Beings of a most ghoulish and repulsive type. Indeed,
as I looked more closely, I could see that not only those pointed out,
but all standing around, had expressions immeasurably more in
keeping with a band of outcast spirits than suggestive of an assembly
representing wisdom and dignified ease. At that moment, however, a most
inelegant movement was caused by one suddenly declaring that he
had recognised this one who is inscribing his experiences to be the
apparition of a certain great reformer who during the period of his
ordinary existence had received the name of Guy Fawkes, and amid a
tumult of overwhelming acclamation a proposal was raised that I
should be carried around in triumph and afterwards initiated into
the observance of a time-honoured custom. Although it had now become
doubtful to what end the adventure was really tending, this person
would have submitted himself agreeably to the participation had not the
blue-apparelled band cleft their way into the throng just as I was about
to be borne off in triumph, and forming themselves into a ringed
barrier around me they presently succeeded in rearranging the contending
elements and in restoring me to the society of my friends. To these
persons they complained with somewhat unreasoning acrimony that I
had been exciting the inmates into a state of rebellion with wild
imaginings, and for the first time I then began to understand that an
important error had been perpetrated by some one, and that instead of
being a meeting-place for those upholding the wisdom and authority
of the country, the building was in reality an establishment for the
mentally defective and those of treacherous instincts.

For some time after this occurrence I failed to regard the subject of
demons and allied Forces in any but a spirit of complete no enthusiasm,
but more recently my interest and research have been enlarged by the
zeal and supernatural conversation of a liberal-minded person who
sought my prosaic society with indefatigable persistence. When we had
progressed to such a length that the one might speak of affairs without
the other at once interposing that he himself had also unfortunately
come out quite destitute of money, this stranger, who revealed to me
that his name was Glidder, but that in the company of a certain chosen
few he was known intimately as the Keeper of the Salograma, approached
me confidentially, and inquired whether we of our Central Kingdom were
in the habit of receiving manifestations from the spirits of those who
had Passed Beyond.

At the unassumed ingenuousness of this remark I suffered my
impassiveness to relax, as I replied with well-established pride that
although a country which neglected its ancestors might doubtless be
able to produce more of the ordinary or graveyard spectres, we were
unapproachable for the diverse forms and malignant enmity of our
apparitions. Of invisible beings alone, I continued tolerantly, we
had the distinction of being harassed by upwards of seven hundred
clearly-defined varieties, while the commoner inflictions of demons,
shades, visions, warlocks, phantoms, sprites, imps, phenomena, ghosts,
and reflections passed almost without comment; and touching our admitted
national speciality of dragons, the honour of supremacy had never been
questioned.

At this, the agreeable person said that the pleasure he derived from
meeting me was all-excelling, and that I must certainly accompany him to
a meeting-place of this same chosen few the following evening, when,
by the means of sacred expedients, they hoped to invoke the presence
of some departed spirits, and perchance successfully raise a tangible
vision or two. To so fair-minded a proposal I held myself acquiescently,
and then inquired where the meeting-place in question was destined
to be--whether in a ruined and abandoned sanctuary, or upon some
precipitous spot of desolation.

The inquiry was gracefully intended, but a passing cloud of unworthy
annoyance revealed itself upon the upper part of the other’s expression
as he replied, “We, the true seekers, despise theatrical accessories,
and, as a matter of act, I couldn’t well get away from the office in
time to go anywhere far. To-morrow we meet at my place in the Camden
Road. It’s only a three-half-penny tram stage from the Euston and
Tottenham Court corner, so it couldn’t be much more convenient for you.”
 He thereupon gave me an inscribed fragment of paper and mentioned the
appointed hour.

“I’ll tell you why I am particularly anxious for you to come to-morrow,”
 he said as we were each departing from one another. “Pash--he’s the
Reader of the Veda among us--and his people have got hold of a Greek
woman (they SAY she is a princess, of course), who can do a lot of
things with flowers and plate glass. They are bringing her for the first
time to-morrow, and it struck me that if I have YOU there already when
they arrive--you’ll come in your national costume by the way?--it will
be a considerable set-off. Since his daughter was presented to the
duchess at the opening of a bazaar, there has been no holding Pash; why
he was ever elected Reader of the Books, I don’t know. Er--we have had
scoffers sometimes, but I trust I may rely upon you not to laugh at
anything you may not happen to agree with?”

With conscientious dignity I replied that I had only really laughed
seven times in my life, and therefore the entertainment was one which
I was not likely to embark upon hastily or with inadequate cause. He
immediately expressed a seemly regret that the detail had been spoken,
and again assuring him that at the stated hour I would present myself
at the house bearing the symbol engraved upon the card, we definitely
parted.

That, as a matter of fact, I did not so present myself at the exact
hour, chiefly concerns the uncouth and arbitrary-minded charioteer who
controlled the movements of the vehicle to which the one whom I was
seeking had explicitly referred; for at an angle in the road he suffered
the horses to draw us aside into a path which did not correspond to the
engraved signs upon the card, nor by any word of persuasion could he be
prevailed upon to return.

Thus, without any possible reproach upon the manner in which I was
conducting the enterprise, it came about that by the time I reached the
spot indicated, all those persons who had been spoken of as constituting
a chosen band were assembled, and with them the barbarian princess.
Nevertheless, this person was irreproachably greeted, and the maiden
indicated even spoke a few words to him in an outside tongue. Being
necessarily unacquainted with the import of the remark I spread out my
hands with a sign of harmonious sympathy and smiled agreeably, whereat
she appeared to receive an added esteem from the faces of those around
(excluding those directly of the House of Glidder), and was thereby
encouraged to speak similarly at intervals, this person each time
replying in a like fashion.

“Is he then a Guide of the Way, also, princess?” said the one Pash, who
had noted the occurrence; to which the maiden replied, “To a degree, yet
lacking the Innermost Mysteries.”

Presently it was announced that all things were fittingly prepared in
another chamber. Here, upon a table of polished wood, stood on the one
side a round stone with certain markings, a group of inscribed books,
and various other emblems; and on the other side a bowl of water, a
sphere of crystal, pieces of unwritten parchment, and behind all, and at
a distance away, a sheet of transparent glass, greater in height than
an ordinary person and as wide. When all were seated--the one who had
enticed me among them placing himself before the stone, the person
Pash guarding the books, the barbarian princess being surrounded by her
symbols and alone in a self-imposed solitude, and the others at various
points--the lights were subdued and the appearances awaited.

It would scarcely be respectful, O my enlightened father, to take up
your well-spent leisure by a too prolific account of the matters which
followed, they being in no way dissimilar from the manifestations
by which the uninitiated little ones of Yuen-ping are wont to amuse
themselves and pass the winter evenings. From time to time harmonious
sounds could be plainly detected, flowers and branches of wood were
scattered sparsely here and there, persons claimed that passing objects
had touched their faces, and misshapen forms of smoke-like density
(which some confidently recognised as the outlines of departed ones whom
they had known), revealed themselves against the glass. When this had
been accomplished, the lights were recalled, and the barbarian maiden,
sinking into a condition of languor, announced and foretold events and
happenings upon which she was consulted, sometimes replying by spoken
words, at others suffering her hand to trace them lightly upon the
parchment sheets. Thus, to an inquirer it was announced that one, Aunt
Mary, in the Upper Air, was well and happy, though undeniably pained at
the action of Cousin William in the matter of the freehold houses, and
more than sceptical how his marriage would turn out. Another was advised
that although the interest on Consols was admittedly lower than that
anticipated by those controlling the destines of a new venture entitled,
The Great Rosy Dawn Gold Mine Development Syndicate, and the name
certainly less poetically inspiring, the advising spirits were of the
opinion that the former enterprise would prove the more stable of the
two, and, in any case, they recommended the person in question to begin
by placing not more than half of her life’s savings into the mine.
The family of the House of Pash was assured that beneficent spirits
surrounded them at every turn, and that their good deeds were not
suffered to fall unfruitfully to the ground; while many bearing the name
of Glidder, on the other hand, were reproved by one who had known them
in infancy for the offences of jealousy, ostentation, vain thoughts,
shallowness of character, and the like.

At length, revered, as there seemed to be no reasonable indication of
any barbarian phantom of weight or authority appearing--nothing,
indeed, beyond what a person in our country, of no admitted skill, would
accomplish in the penetrating light of day with two others holding his
hands, and a third reposing upon his head, I formed the perhaps immature
judgment that the one to whom I was indebted for the entertainment would
be suffering a grievous frustration of his hopes and a diminution of his
outward authority. Therefore, without sufficient consideration of the
restricted surroundings, as it afterwards appeared, I threw myself
into a retrospective vision, and floating unencumbered through space,
I sought for Kwan Kiang-ti, the Demon of the Waters, upon whom I might
fittingly call, as I was given into his keeping by the ceremony of
spirit-adoption at an early age. Meeting an influence which I recognised
to be an indication of his presence, in the vicinity of the Eighth
Region, I obsequiously entreated that he would reveal himself without
delay, and then, convinced of his sympathetic intervention, I suffered
my spirit to recall itself, and revived into the condition of an
ordinary existence.

“We have among us this evening, my friends,” the one Pash was saying,
“a very remarkable lady--if I may use so democratic a term in the
connection--to whom the limits of Time and Space are empty words, and
before whose supreme Will the most portentous Forces of Occult Nature
mutely confess themselves her attending slaves--” But at that moment
the rolling drums of Kiang-ti’s thunder drowned his words, although he
subsequently raised his voice above it to entreat that any knives or
other articles of a bright and attractive kind should at once be removed
to a place of safety.

Heralded by these continuous sounds, and accompanied by innumerable
flashes of lightning, the genius presently manifested himself, leisurely
developing out of the air around. He appeared in his favourite guise of
an upright dragon, his scales being arranged in rows of nine each way,
a pearl showing within his throat, and upon his head the wooden bar. The
lights were extinguished incapably by the rain which fell continually in
his presence, but from his body there proceeded a luminous breath which
sufficiently revealed the various incidents.

“Kong Ho,” said this opportune vision, speaking with a voice like the
beating of a brass gong, “the course you have adopted is an unusual one,
but the weight and regularity of your offerings have merit in my eyes.
Nevertheless, if your invocation is only the outcome of a shallow vanity
or a profane love of display, nothing can save you from a painful death.
Speak now, fully and without evasion, and fear nothing.”

“Amiable Being,” said this person, kow-towing profoundly, “the matter
was designed to the end only that your incomparable versatility might
be fittingly displayed. These barbarians sought vainly to raise phantoms
capable of any useful purpose, whereupon I, jealous of your superior
omnipotence, judged it would be an unseemly neglect not to inform you of
the opportunity.”

“It is well,” said the demon affably. “All doubt in the matter shall
now be set at rest. Could any more convincing act be found than that
I should breath upon these barbarians and reduce them instantly to a
scattering of thin white ashes?”

“Assuredly it would be a conclusive testimony,” I replied; “yet in
that case consider how inadequate a witness could be borne to your
enlightened condescension, when none would be left but one to whom the
spoken language of this Island is more in the nature of a trap than a
comfortable vehicle.”

“Your reasoning is profound, Kong Ho,” he replied, “yet abundant
proof shall not be wanting.” With these words he raised his hand, and
immediately the air became filled with an overwhelming shower of
those productions with which Kwan Kiang-ti’s name is chiefly
associated--shells and pebbles of all kinds, lotus and other roots from
the river banks, weeds from seas of greater depths, fish of interminable
variety from both fresh and bitter waters, all falling in really
embarrassing abundance, and mingled with an incessant rain of sand and
water. In the midst of this the demon suddenly passed away, striking the
table as he went, so that it was scarred with the brand of a five-clawed
hand, shattering all the objects upon it (excepting the stone and
the books, which he doubtless regarded as sacred to some extent), and
leaving the room involved in a profound darkness.

“For the love av the saints--for the love av the saints, save us from
the yellow devils!” exclaimed a voice from the spot where last the
barbarian princess had reclined, and upon this person going to her
assistance with lights it was presently revealed that she alone had
remained seated, the others having all assembled themselves beneath the
table in spite of the incapability of the space at their disposal. Most
of the weightier evidences of Kwan Kiang-ti’s majestic presence had
faded away, though the table retained the print of his impressive hand,
many objects remained irretrievably torn apart, and in a distant corner
of the room an insignificant heap of shells and seaweed still lingered.
From the floor covering a sprinkling of the purest Fuh-chow sand rose
at every step, the salt dew of the Tung-Hai still dropped from
the surroundings, and, at a later period, a shore crab was found
endeavouring to make its escape undetected.

Convinced that the success of the manifestation would have enlarged
the one Glidder’s esteem towards me to an inexpressible degree, I now
approached him with words of self-deprecation ready on my tongue, but
before he spoke I became aware, from the nature of his glance, that
the provision had been unnecessary, for already his face had begun to
assume, to a most distended amount, the expression which I had long
recognised as a synonym that some detail had been regarded at a
different angle from that anticipated.

“May I ask,” he began in a somewhat heavily-laden voice, after he had
assured himself that the person who was speaking was himself, and his
external attributes unchanged, “May I ask, sir” (and at this title,
which is untranslatable in its many-sided significance when technically
employed, I recognised that all complimentary intercourse might be
regarded as having closed), “whether you accept the responsibility of
these proceedings?”

“Touching the appearance which has so essentially contributed to the
success of the occasion, it is undeniably due to this one’s foresight,”
 I replied modestly.

“Then let me tell you, sir, that I consider it an outrage--a dastardly
outrage.”

“Yet,” protested this person with retiring assertiveness, “the expressed
object of the ceremony, as it stood before my intelligence, was for the
set purpose of invoking spirits and raising certain visions.”

“Spirits!” exclaimed the one before me with an accent of concentrated
aversion; “yes, spirits; impalpable, civilised, genuine spirits, who
manifest themselves through recognised media, and are conformable to the
usages of the best drawing-room society--yes. But not demons, sir; not
Chinese devils in the Camden Road--no. Truth and Light at any cost, not
paganism. It’s perfectly scandalous. Look at the mahogany table--ruined;
look at the wall-paper--conventional mackerels with a fishing-net
background, new this spring--soused; look at the Brussels carpet,
seventeen six by twenty-five--saturated!”

“I quite agree with you, Mr. Glidder,” here interposed the individual
Pash. “I was watching you, sir, closely the whole time, and I have my
suspicions about how it was done. I don’t know whether Mr. Glidder
has any legal redress, but I should certainly advise him to see his
solicitors to-morrow, and in the meantime--”

“He is my guest,” exclaimed the one whose hospitality I was enjoying,
“and while he is beneath my roof he is sacred.”

“But I do not think that it would be kind to detain him any longer in
his wet things,” said another of the household, with pointed malignity,
and accepting this as an omen of departure, I withdrew myself, bowing
repeatedly, but offering no closer cordiality.

“Through a torn sleeve one drops a purse of gold,” it is well said; and
as if to prove to a deeper end that misfortune is ever double-handed,
this incapable being, involved in thoughts of funereal density, bent
his footsteps to an inaccurate turning, and after much wandering was
compelled to pass the night upon a desolate heath--but that would be the
matter of another narrative.

With an insidious doubt whether, after all, the far-seeing Kwan
Kiang-ti’s first impulse would not have been the most satisfactory
conclusion to the enterprise.

KONG HO.




LETTER VII


 Concerning warfare, both as waged by ourselves and by a
 nation devoid of true civilisation. The aged man and the
 meeting and the parting of our ways. The instance of the one
 who expressed emotion by leaping.


VENERATED SIRE,--You are omniscient, but I cannot regard the fear which
you express in your beautifully-written letter, bearing the sign of the
eleventh day of the seventh moon, as anything more than the imaginings
prompted by a too-lavish supper of your favourite shark’s fin and peanut
oil. Unless the dexterously-elusive attributes of the genial-spoken
persons high in office at Pekin have deteriorated contemptibly
since this one’s departure, it is quite impossible for our great
and enlightened Empire to be drawn into a conflict with the northern
barbarians whom you indicate, against our will. When the matter becomes
urgent, doubtless a prince of the Imperial line will loyally suffer
himself to Pass Above, and during the period of ceremonial mourning
for so pure and exalted an official it would indeed be an unseemly
desecration to engage in any public business. If this failed, and an
ultimatum were pressed with truly savage contempt for all that is sacred
and refined, it might be well next to consider the health even of the
sublime Emperor himself (or, perhaps better, that of the select and
ever-present Dowager Empress); but should the barbarians still advance,
and, setting the usages of civilised warfare at defiance, threaten an
engagement in the midst of this unparalleled calamity, there will be no
alternative but to have a formidable rebellion in the Capital. All
the barbarian powers will then assemble as usual, and in the general
involvement none dare move alone, and everything will have to be
regarded as being put back to where it was before. It is well said, “The
broken vessel can never be made whole, but it may be delicately arranged
so that another shall displace it.”

These barbarians, less resourceful in device, have only recently emerged
from a conflict into which they do not hesitate to admit they were drawn
despite their protests. Such incompetence is characteristic of their
methods throughout. Not in any way disguising their purpose, they
at once sent out an army of those whom could be the readiest seized,
certainly furnishing them with weapons, charms to use in case of
emergency, and three-coloured standards (their adversaries adopting
a white banner to symbolise the conciliation of their attitude, and
displaying both freely in every extremity), but utterly neglecting to
teach them the arts of painting their bodies with awe-inspiring forms,
of imitating the cries of wild animals as they attacked, of clashing
their weapons together with menacing vigour, or any of the recognised
artifices by which terror may be struck into the ranks of an awaiting
foeman. The result was that which the prudent must have foreseen. The
more accomplished enemy, without exposing themselves to any unnecessary
inconvenience, gained many advantages by their intrepid power of
dissimulation--arranging their garments and positions in such a way that
they had the appearance of attacking when in reality they were effecting
a prudent retreat; rapidly concealing themselves among the earth on the
approach of an overwhelming force; becoming openly possessed with the
prophetic vision of an assured final victory whenever it could be no
longer concealed that matters were becoming very desperate indeed; and
gaining an effective respite when all other ways of extrication were
barred against them by the stratagem of feigning that they were other
than those whom they had at first appeared to be.

In the meantime the adventure was not progressing pleasantly for those
chiefly concerned at home. With the earliest tidings of repulse it was
discovered that in the haste of embarkation the wrong persons had been
sent, all those who were really the fittest to command remaining behind,
and many of these did not hesitate to write to the printed papers,
resolutely admitting that they themselves were in every way better
qualified to bring the expedition to a successful end, at the same time
skilfully pointing out how the disasters which those in the field
had incurred could easily have been avoided by acting in a precisely
contrary manner.

In the emergency the most far-seeing recommended a more unbending policy
of extermination. Among these, one in particular, a statesman bearing
an illustrious name of two-edged import, distinguished himself by the
liberal broad-mindedness of his opinions, and for the time he even did
not flinch from making himself excessively unpopular by the wide
and sweeping variety of his censure. “We are confessedly a barbarian
nation,” fearlessly declared this unprejudiced person (who, although
entitled by hereditary right to carry a banner on the field of battle,
with patriotic self-effacement preferred to remain at home and encourage
those who were fighting by pointing out their inadequacy to the task and
the extreme unlikelihood of their ever accomplishing it), “and in order
to achieve our purpose speedily it is necessary to resort to the methods
of barbarism.” The most effective measure, as he proceeded to explain
with well-thought-out detail, would be to capture all those least
capable of resistance, concentrate them into a given camp, and then
at an agreed signal reduce the entire assembly to what he termed, in
a passage of high-minded eloquence, “a smoking hecatomb of women and
children.”

His advice was pointed with a crafty insight, for not only would such a
course have brought the stubborn enemy to a realisation of the weakness
of their position and thus paved the way to a dignified peace, but by
the act itself few would have been left to hand down the tradition of
a relentless antagonism. Yet with incredible obtuseness his advice was
ignored and he himself was referred to at the time by those who regarded
the matter from a different angle, with a scarcely-veiled dislike, which
towards many of his followers took the form of building materials and
other dissentient messages whenever they attempted to raise their voices
publicly. As an inevitable result the conquest of the country took
years, where it would have been moons had the more truly humane policy
been adopted, commerce and the arts languished, and in the end so little
spoil was taken that it was more common to meet six mendicants wearing
the honourable embellishment of the campaign than to see one captured
slave maiden offered for sale in the market places--indeed, even to this
day the deficiency is clearly admitted and openly referred to as The
Great “Domestic” Problem.

At various times during my residence here I have been filled with a
most acute gratification when the words of those around have seemed to
indicate that they recognised the undoubted superiority of the laws and
institutions of our enlightened country. Sometimes, it is true, upon a
more detailed investigation of the incident, it has presently appeared
that either I had misunderstood the exact nature of their sentiments
or they had slow-wittedly failed to grasp the precise operation of the
enactment I had described; but these exceptions are clearly the outcome
of their superficial training, and do not affect the fact my feeble and
frequently even eccentric arguments are at length certainly moving the
more intelligent into an admission of what constitutes true justice
and refinement. It is not to be denied that here and there exists a
prejudice against our customs even in the minds of the studious; but as
this is invariably the shadow of misconception, it has frequently been
my sympathetic privilege to promote harmony by means of the inexorable
logic of fact and reason. “But are not your officials uncompromisingly
opposed to the freedom of the Press?” said one who conversed with me on
the varying phases of the two countries, and knowing that in his eyes
this would constitute an unendurable offence, I at once appeased his
mind. “By no means,” I replied; “if anything, the exact contrary is
the case. As a matter of reality, of course, there is no Press now, the
all-seeing Board of Censors having wisely determined that it was not
stimulating to the public welfare; but if such an institution was
permitted to exist you may rest genially assured that nothing could
exceed the lenient toleration which all in office would extend towards
it.” A similar instance of malicious inaccuracy is widely spoken of
regarding our lesser ones. “Is it really a fact, Mr. Kong,” exclaimed a
maiden of magnanimous condescension, to this person recently, “that
we poor women are despised in your country, and that among the
working-classes female children are even systematically abandoned as
soon as they are born?” Suffering my features to express amusement at
this unending calumny, I indicated my violent contempt towards the one
who had first uttered it. “So far from despising them,” I continued,
with ingratiating gallantry, “we recognise that they are quite necessary
for the purposes of preparing our food, carrying weighty burdens,
and the like; and how grotesque an action would it be for poor but
affectionate parents to abandon one who in a few years’ time could be
sold at a really remunerative profit, this, indeed, being the principal
means of sustenance in many frugal families.”

On another occasion I had seated myself upon a wooden couch in one
of the open spaces about the outskirts of the city, when an aged man
chanced to pass by. Him I saluted with ceremonious politeness, on
account of his years and the venerable dignity of his beard. Thereupon
he approached near, and remarking affably that the afternoon was good
(though, to use no subtle evasion, it was very evil), he congenially sat
by my side and entered into familiar discourse.

“They say that in your part of the world we old grandfathers are
worshipped,” he said, after recounting to my ears all the most intimate
details of his existence from his youth upwards; “now, might that be
right?”

“Truly,” I replied. “It is the unchanging foundation of our system of
morality.”

“Ay, ay,” he admitted pleasantly. “We are a long way behind them
foreigners in everything. At the rate we’re going there won’t be any
trade nor work nor religion left in this country in another twenty
years. I often wish I had gone abroad when I was younger. And if I
had chanced upon your parts I should be worshipped, eh?” and at the
agreeable thought the aged man laughed in his throat with simple humour.

“Assuredly,” I replied; “--after you were dead.”

“Eh?” exclaimed the venerable person, checking the fountain of his mirth
abruptly at the word. “Dead! not before? Doesn’t--doesn’t that seem a
bit of a waste?”

“Such has been the observance from the time of unrecorded antiquity,” I
replied. “‘Obey parents, respect the old, loyally uphold the sovereign,
and worship ancestors.’”

“Well, well,” remarked the one beside me, “obedience and respect--that’s
something nowadays. And you make them do it?”

“Our laws are unflinching in their application,” I said. “No crime is
held to be more detestable than disrespect of those to whom we owe our
existence.”

“Quite right,” he agreed, “it’s a pleasure to hear it. It must be a
great country, yours; a country with a future, I should say. Now, about
that youngest lad of my son Henry’s--the one that drops pet lizards down
my neck, and threatened to put rat poison into his mother’s tea when she
wouldn’t take him to the Military Turneyment; what would they do to him
by your laws?”

“If the assertion were well sustained by competent witnesses,” I
replied, “it would probably be judged so execrable an offence, that
a new punishment would have to be contrived. Failing that, he would
certainly be wrapped round from head to foot in red-hot chains, and thus
exposed to public derision.”

“Ah, red-hot chains!” said the aged person, as though the words formed a
pleasurable taste upon his palate. “The young beggar! Well, he’d deserve
it.”

“Furthermore,” I continued, gratified at having found one who so
intelligently appreciated the deficiencies of his own country and the
unblemished perfection of ours, “his parents and immediate descendants,
if any should exist, would be submitted to a fate as inevitable but
slightly less contemptuous--slow compression, perchance; his parents
once removed (thus enclosing your venerable personality), and remoter
offsprings would be merely put to the sword without further ignominy,
and those of less kinship to about the fourth degree would doubtless
escape with branding and a reprimand.”

“Lordelpus!” exclaimed the patriarchal one, hastily leaping to the
extreme limit of the wooden couch, and grasping his staff into a
significant attitude of defence; “what’s that for?”

“Our system of justice is all-embracing,” I explained. “It is reasonably
held that in such a case either that there is an inherent strain of
criminality which must be eradicated at all hazard, or else that those
who are responsible for the virtuous instruction of the young have been
grossly neglectful of their duty. Whichever is the true cause, by this
unfailing method we reach the desired end, for, as our proverb aptly
says, ‘Do the wise pluck the weed and leave the roots to spread?’”

“It’s butchery, nothing short of Smithfield,” said the ancient person
definitely, rising and moving to a more remote distance as he spoke the
words, yet never for a moment relaxing the aggressive angle at which
he thrust out his staff before him. “You’re a bloodthirsty race in my
opinion, and when they get this door open in China that there’s so much
talk about, out you go through it, my lad, or old England will know
why.” With this narrow-minded imprecation on his lips he left me, not
even permitting me to continue expounding what would be the most likely
sentences meted out to the witnesses in the case, the dwellers of the
same street, and the members of the household with whom the youth in
question had contemplated forming an alliance.

Among the many contradictions which really almost seem purposely
arranged to entrap the unwary in this strangely under-side-up country,
is the fact that while the ennobled and those of high official rank are
courteous in their attitude and urbane--frequently even to the extent
of refusing money from those whom they have obliged, no matter how
privately pressed upon them--the low-caste and slavish are not only
deficient in obsequiousness, but are permitted to retort openly to those
who address them with fitting dignity. Here such a state of things
is too general to excite remark, but as instances are well called the
flowers of the tree of assertion, this person will set forth the manner
in which he was contumaciously opposed by an oblique-eyed outcast who
attended within the stall of one selling wrought gold, jewels, and
merchandise of the finer sort.

Being desirous of procuring a gift wherewith to propitiate a certain
maiden’s esteem, and seeing above a shop of varied attraction a
suspended sign emblematic of three times repeated gild abundance I drew
near, not doubting to find beneath so auspicious a token the fulfilment
of an honourable accommodation. Inside the window was displayed one
of the implements by which the various details of a garment are joined
together upon turning a wheel, hung about with an inscription setting
forth that it was esteemed at the price of two units of gold, nineteen
pieces of silver, and eleven and three-quarters of the brass cash of the
land, and judging that no more suitable object could be procured for the
purpose, I entered the shop, and desired the attending slave to submit
it to my closer scrutiny.

“Behold,” I exclaimed, when I had made a feint of setting the device
into motion (for it need not be concealed from you, O discreet one, that
I was really inadequate to the attempt, and, indeed, narrowly escaped
impaling myself upon its sudden and unexpected protrusions), “the
highly-burnished surface of your dexterously arranged window gave to
this engine a rich attractiveness which is altogether lacking at a
closer examination. Nevertheless, this person will not recede from a
perhaps too impulsive offer of one unit of gold, three pieces of silver,
and four and a half brass cash,” my object, of course, being that after
the mutual recrimination of disparagement and over-praise we should in
the length of an hour or two reach a becoming compromise in the middle
distance.

“Well,” responded the menial one, regarding me with an expression in
which he did not even attempt to subdue the baser emotions, “you HAVE
come a long way for nothing”; and he made a pretence of wishing to
replace the object.

“Yet,” I continued, “observe with calm impartiality how insidiously the
rust has assailed the outer polish of the lacquer; perceive here upon
the beneath part of wood the ineffaceable depression of a deeply-pointed
blow; note well the--”

“It was good enough for you to want me to muck up out of the window,
wasn’t it?” demanded the obstinate barbarian, becoming passionate in his
bearing rather than reluctantly, but with courteous grace, lessening the
price to a trifling degree, as we regard the proper way of carrying on
the enterprise.

“It is well said,” I admitted, hoping that he might yet learn wisdom
from my attitude of unruffled urbanity, though I feared that his angle
of negotiating was unconquerably opposed to mine, “but now its many
imperfections are revealed. The inelegance of its outline, the grossness
of the applied colours, the unlucky combination of numbers engraved upon
this plate, the--”

“Damme!” cried the utterly perverse rebel standing opposite, “why don’t
you keep on your Compound, you Yellow Peril? Who asked you to come into
my shop to blackguard the things? Come now, who did?”

“Assuredly it is your place of commerce,” I replied cheerfully,
preparing to bring forward an argument, which in our country never fails
to shake the most stubborn, “yet bend your eyes to the fact that at no
great distance away there stands another and a more alluring stall of
merchandise where--”

“Go to it then!” screamed the abandoned outcast, leaping over his
counter and shouting aloud in a frenzy of uncontrollable rage. “Clear
out, or I’ll bend my feet--” but concluding at this point that some
private calumny from which he was doubtless suffering was disturbing
his mind to so great an extent that there was little likelihood of
our bringing the transaction to a profitable end, I left the shop
immediately but with befitting dignity.

With a fell-founded assurance that you will now be acquiring a really
precise and bird’s-eye-like insight into practically all phases of this
country.

KONG HO.




LETTER VIII


 Concerning the wisdom of the sublime Wei Chung and its
 application to the ordinary problems of existence. The
 meeting of three, hitherto unknown to each other, about a
 wayside inn, and their various manners of conducting the
 enterprise.


VENERATED SIRE,--You will doubtless remember the behaviour of the aged
philosopher Wei Chung, when commanded by the broad-minded emperor of his
time to reveal the hidden sources of his illimitable knowledge, so
that all might freely acquire, and the race thereby become raised to a
position of unparalleled excellence. Taking the well-disposed sovereign
familiarly by the arm, Wei Chung led him to the mouth of his cave in the
forest, and, standing by his side, bade him reflect with open eyes for
a short space of time, and then express aloud what he had seen. “Nothing
of grave import,” declared the emperor when the period was accomplished;
“only the trees shaken by the breeze.” “It is enough,” replied Wei
Chung. “What, to the adroitly-balanced mind, does such a sight
reveal?” “That it is certainly a windy day,” exclaimed the omnipotent
triumphantly, for although admittedly divine, he yet lacked the
philosopher’s discrimination. “On the contrary,” replied the sage
coldly, “that is the natural pronouncement of the rankly superficial. To
the highly-trained intellect it conveys the more subtle truth that the
wind affects the trees, and not the trees affect the wind. For upwards
of seventy years this one has daily stood at the door of his cave for
a brief period, and regularly garnering a single detail of like
brilliance, has made it the well-spring for a day’s reflection. As the
result he now has by heart upwards of twenty-five thousand useful facts,
all serviceable for original proverbs, and an encyclopaedic mind
which would enable him to take a high place in a popular competition
unassisted by a single work of reference.” Much impressed by the
adventure the charitably-inclined emperor presented Wei Chung with an
onyx crown (which the philosopher at once threw into an adjacent well),
and returning to his capital published a decree that each day at
sunrise every person should stand at the door of his dwelling, and after
observing for a period, compare among themselves the details of their
thoughts. By this means he hoped to achieve his imperial purpose, but
although the literal part of the enactment is scrupulously maintained,
especially by the slothful and defamatory, who may be seen standing
at their doors and conversing together even to this day, from some
unforeseen imperfection the intellectual capacity of the race has
remained exactly as it was before.

Nevertheless it is not to be questioned that the system of the versatile
Wei Chung was, in itself, grounded upon a far-seeing accuracy, and
as the need of such a rational observation is deepened among the
inconsistencies and fantastic customs of a barbarian race, I have made
it a useful habit to accept as a guide for the day’s behaviour the
reflections engendered by the first noteworthy incident of the morning.

Upon the day with which this letter concerns itself I had set forth, in
accordance with an ever-present desire, to explore some of the hidden
places of the city. At the time a tempest of great ferocity was raging,
and bending my head before it I had the distinction of coming into
contact with a person of ill-endowed exterior at an angle where two
reads met. This amiable wayfarer exchanged civilities with me after the
politeness characteristic of the labouring classes towards those who
differ from them in speech, dress, or colour: that is to say, he filled
his pipe from my proffered store, and after lighting it threw the match
into my face, and passed on with an appropriate remark.

Doubtless this insignificant occurrence would have faded without
internal comment if the penetrating Wei Chung had never existed, but
now, guided by his sublime precedent, I arranged the incident for the
day’s conduct under three reflective heads.

It was while I was meditating on the second of these that an exclamation
caused me to turn, when I observed a prosperously-outlined person in
the act of picking up a scrip which had the appearance of being lavishly
distended with pieces of gold.

“If I had not seen you pass it, I should have opined that this hyer
wallet belonged to you,” remarked the justice-loving stranger (for
the incident had irresistibly retarded my own footsteps), speaking
the language of this land, but with an accent of penetrating harmony
hitherto unknown to my ears. With these auspicious words he turned over
the object upon his hand doubtfully.

“So entrancing a possibility is, as you gracefully suggest, of
unavoidable denial,” I replied. “Nevertheless, this person will not
hesitate to join his acclamation with yours; for, as the Book of Verses
wisely says, ‘Even the blind, if truly polite, will extol the prospect
from your house-top.’”

“That’s so,” admitted the one by my side. “But I don’t know that there
is any call for a special thanksgiving. As I happen to have more
money of my own than I can reasonably spend I shall drop this in at a
convenient police station. I dare say some poor critter is pining away
for it now.”

Pleasantly impressed by the resolute benevolence of the one who had
a greater store of wealth than he could, by his own unaided efforts,
dispose of, I arranged myself unobtrusively at his side, and maintaining
an exhibition of my most polished and genial conversation, I sought to
penetrate deeply into his esteem.

“Gaze in this direction, Kong,” he said at length, calling me by name
with auspicious familiarity; “I am a benighted stranger in this hyer
city, and so are you, I rek’n. Suppose we liquor up, and then take a few
of the side shows together.”

“The suggestion is one against which I will erect no ill-disposed
barrier,” I at once replied, so inflexibly determined not to lose sight
of a person possessing such engaging attributes as to be cheerfully
prepared even to consume my rice spirit in the inverted position which
his words implied if the display was persisted in. “Nevertheless,”
 I added, with a resourceful prudence, “although by no means
undistinguished among the highest literary and competitive circles of
his native Yuen-ping, the one before you is incapable of walking in the
footsteps of a person whose accumulations are greater than he himself
can appreciably diminish.”

“That’s all right, Kong,” exclaimed the one whom my last words fittingly
described, striking the recess of his lower garment with a gesture of
graceful significance. “When I take a fancy to any one it isn’t a matter
of dollars. I usually carry a trifle of five hundred or a thousand
pounds in my pocket-book, and if we can get through that--why, there’s
plenty more waiting at the bank. Say, though, I hope you don’t keep much
about you; it isn’t really safe.”

“The temptation to do so is one which this person has hitherto
successfully evaded,” I replied. “The contents of this reptile-skin
case”--and not to be outshone in mutual confidence I here displayed it
openly--“do not exceed nine or ten pieces of gold and a like number of
printed obligations promising to pay five pieces each.”

“Put it away, Kong,” he said resolutely. “You won’t need that so long as
you’re with me. Well, now, what sort of a saloon have we here?”

As far as the opinion might be superficially expressed it had every
indication of being one of noteworthy antiquity, and to the innately
modest mind its unassuming diffidence might have lent an added charm.
Nevertheless, on most occasions this person would have maintained
an unshaken dexterity in avoiding its open door, but as the choice
admittedly lay in the hands of one who carried five hundred or a
thousand pieces of gold we went in together and passed through to a
compartment of retiring seclusion.

In our own land, O my orthodox-minded father, where the unfailing
resources of innumerable bands of dragons, spirits, vampires, ghouls,
shadows, omens, and thunderstorms are daily enlisted to carry into
effect the pronouncements of an appointed destiny, we have many
historical examples of the inexorably converging legs of coincidence,
but none, I think, more impressively arranged than the one now
descending this person’s brush.

We had scarcely reposed ourselves, and taken from the hands of an
awaiting slave the vessels of thrice-potent liquid which in this Island
is regarded as the indispensable accompaniment to every movement of
existence, when a third person entered the room, and seating himself
at a table some slightly removed distance away, lowered his head and
abandoned himself to a display of most lavish dejection.

“That poor cuss doesn’t appear to be holiday-making,” remarked the
sincerely-compassionate person at my side, after closely observing the
other for a period; and then, moved by the overpowering munificence of
his inward nature, he called aloud, “Say, stranger, you seem to have
got it thickly in the neck. Is it family affliction or the whisky of the
establishment?”

At these affably-intentioned words the stranger raised his eyes quickly,
with an indication of not having up to that time been aware of our
presence.

“Sir,” he exclaimed, approaching to a spot where he could converse
with a more enhanced facility, “when I loosened the restraint of an
overpowering if unmanly grief, I imagined that I was alone, for I
would have shunned even the most flattering sympathy, but your
charitably-modulated voice invites confidence. The one before you is the
most contemptible, left-handed, and disqualified outcast in creation,
and he is now making his way towards the river, while his widow will be
left to take in washing, his infant son to vend evening printed leaves,
and his graceful and hitherto highly secluded daughters to go upon the
stage.”

“Say, stranger,” interposed this person, by no means unwilling to
engrave upon his memory this newly-acquired form of greeting, “the
emotion is doubtless all-pressing, but in my ornate and flower-laden
tongue we have a salutation, ‘Slowly, slowly; walk slowly,’ which seems
to be of far-seeing application.”

“That’s so,” remarked the one by my side. “Separate it with the teeth,
inch by inch.”

“I will be calm, then,” continued the other (who, to avoid the
complication of the intermingling circumstances, may be described as
the more stranger of the two), and he took of his neckcloth. “I am a
merchant in tea, yellow fat, and mixed spices, in a small but hitherto
satisfactory way.” Thus revealing himself, he continued to set forth
how at an earlier hour he had started on a journey to deposit his wealth
(doubtless as a propitiation of outraged deities) upon a certain bank,
and how, upon reaching the specified point, he discovered that what
he carried had eluded his vigilance. “All gone: notes, gold, and
pocket-book--the savings of a lifetime,” concluded the ill-omened one,
and at the recollection a sudden and even more highly-sustained frenzy
of self-unpopularity involving him, without a pause he addressed himself
by seven and twenty insulting expressions, many of which were quite new
to my understanding.

At the earliest mention of the details affecting the loss, the elbow of
the person who had made himself responsible for the financial obligation
of the day propelled itself against my middle part, and unseen by the
other he indicated to me by means of his features that the entertainment
was becoming one of agreeable prepossession.

“Now, touching this hyer wallet,” he said presently. “How might you
describe it?”

“In colour it was red, and within were two compartments, the one
containing three score notes each of ten pounds, the other fifty pounds
of gold. But what’s the use of describing it? Some lucky demon will pick
it up and pocket the lot, and I shall never see a cent of it again.”

“Then you’d better consult one who reburnishes the eyes,” declared the
magnanimous one with a laugh, and drawing forth the article referred to
he cast it towards the merchant in a small way.

At this point of the narrative my thoroughly incompetent brush confesses
the proportions of the requirement to be beyond its most extended
limit, and many very honourable details are necessarily left without
expression.

“I’ve known men of all sorts, good, bad, and bothwise,” exclaimed the
one who had recovered his possessions; “but I never thought to meet
a gent as would hand over six hundred and fifty pounds as if it was a
toothpick. Sir, it overbalances me; it does, indeed.”

“Say no more about it,” urged the first person, and to suggest
gracefully that the incident had reached its furthest extremity, he
began to set out the melody of an unspoken verse.

“I will say no more, then,” he replied; “but you cannot reasonably
prevent my doing something to express my gratitude. If you are not too
proud you will come and partake of food and wine with me beneath the
sign of the Funereal Male Cow, and to show my confidence in you I shall
insist upon you carrying my pocket-book.”

The person whom I had first encountered suffered his face to become
excessively amused. “Say, stranger, do you take me for a pack-mule?”
 he replied good-naturedly. “I already have about as much as I want to
handle. Never mind; we’ll come along with you, and Mr. Kong shall carry
your bullion.”

At this delicate and high-minded proposal a rapid change, in no way
complimentary to my explicit habit of adequately conducting any venture
upon which I may be engaged, came over the face of the second person.

“Sir,” he exclaimed, “I have nothing to say against this gentleman, but
I am under no obligation to him, and I don’t see why I should trust him
with everything I possess.”

“Stranger,” exclaimed the other rising to his feet (and from this point
it must be understood that the various details succeeded one another
with a really agile dexterity), “let me tell you that Mr. Kong is my
friend, and that ought to be enough.”

“It is. If you say this gentleman is your friend, and that you have
known him long and intimately enough to be able to answer for him,
that’s good enough for me.”

“Well,” admitted the first person, and I could not conceal from myself
that his tone was inauspiciously reluctant, “I can’t exactly say that
I’ve known him long; in fact I only met him half an hour ago. But I have
the fullest confidence in his integrity.”

“It’s just as I expected. Well, sir, you’re good-natured enough for
anything, but if you’ll excuse me, I must say that you’re a small piece
of an earthenware vessel after all”--the veiled allusion doubtlessly
being that the vessel of necessity being broken, the contents inevitably
escape--“and I hope you’re not being had.”

“I’m not, and I’ll prove it before we go out together,” retorted the
engaging one, who had in the meantime become so actively impetuous on my
account, that he did not remain content with the spoken words, but threw
the various belongings about as he mentioned them in a really profuse
display of inimitable vehemence. “Here, Kong, take this hyer pocket-book
whatever he says. Now on the top of that take everything I’ve got, and
you know what THAT figures up to. Now give this gentleman your little
lot to keep him quiet; I don’t ask for anything. Now, stranger, I’m
ready. You and I will take a stroll round the block and back again, and
if Mr. Kong isn’t waiting here for us when we return with everything
intact and O.K., I’ll double your deposit and never trust a durned soul
again.”

Nodding genially over his shoulder with a harmonious understanding,
expressive of the fact that we were embarking upon an undeniably
diverting episode, the benevolent-souled person who had accumulated more
riches than he was competent to melt away himself, passed out, urging
the doubtful and still protesting one before him.

Thus abandoned to my own reflections, I pondered for a short time
profitably on the third head of the day’s meditation (Touching the match
and this person’s unattractively-lined face. The revealed truth: the
inexperienced sheep cannot pass through the hedge without leaving
portions of his wool), and then finding the philosophy of Wei Chung very
good, I determined to remove the superfluous apprehensions of the vender
of food-stuffs with less delay by setting out and meeting them on their
return.

A few paces distant from the door, one of the ever-present watchers of
the street was standing, watching the street with unremitting vigilance,
while from the well-guarded expression of his face it might nevertheless
be gathered that he stood as though in expectation.

“Prosperity,” I said, with seasonable greeting. (For no excess of
consideration is too great to be lavished upon these, who unite
within themselves the courage of a high warrior, the expertness of a
three-handed magician, and the courtesy of a genial mandarin.) “I
seek two, apparelled thus and thus. Did you, by any chance, mark the
direction of their footsteps?”

“Oh,” he said, regarding this person with a most flattering application,
“YOU seek them, do you? Well, they’ve just gone off in a hansom, and
they’ll want a lot of seeking for the next week or two. You let them
carry your purse, perhaps?”

“Assuredly,” I replied. “As a mark of confidence; this person, for his
part, receiving a like token at their hands.”

“That’s it,” said the official watcher, conveying into his voice a
subtle indication that he had become excessively fatigued. “It’s like
a nursery tale--never too old to take with the kids. Well, come along,
poor lamb, the station isn’t far.”

So great had become the reliance which by this time I habitually reposed
in these men, that I never sought to oppose their pronouncements (such
a course being not only useless but undignified), and we therefore
together reached the place which the one by my side had described as a
station.

From the outside the building was in no way imposing, but upon reaching
an inner dungeon it at once became plain that no matter with what crime
a person might be charged, even the most stubborn resistance would be
unavailing. Before a fiercely-burning fire were arranged metal pincers,
massive skewers, ornamental branding irons, and the usual accessories of
the grill, one tool being already thrust into the heart of the flame
to indicate the nature of its use, and its immediate readiness for the
purpose. Pegs from which the accused could be hung by the thumbs
with weights attached to the feet, covered an entire wall; chains,
shackling-irons, fetters, steel rings for compressing the throat, and
belts for tightening the chest, all had their appointed places, while
the Chair, the Boot, the Heavy Hat, and many other appliances quite
unknown to our system of administering justice were scattered about.

Without pausing to select any of these, the one who led me approached
a raised desk at which was seated a less warlike official, whose
sympathetic appearance inspired confidence. “Kong Ho,” exclaimed to
himself the person who is inscribing these words, “here is an individual
into whose discriminating ear it would be well to pour the exact
happening without evasion. Then even if the accusation against you be
that of resembling another or trafficking with unlawful Forces, he will
doubtless arrange the matter so that the expiation shall be as light and
inexpensive as possible.”

By this time certain other officials had drawn near. “What is it?” I
heard one demand, and another replied, “Brooklyn Ben and Jimmie the
Butterman again. Ah, they aren’t artful, are they!” but at this moment
the two into whose power I had chiefly fallen having conversed together,
I was commanded to advance towards them and reveal my name.

“Kong,” I replied freely; and I had formed a design to explain somewhat
of the many illustrious ancestors of the House, when the one at the
desk, pausing to inscribe my answer in a book, spoke out.

“Kong?” he said. “Is that the christian or surname?”

“Sir-name?” replied this person between two thoughts. “Undoubtedly
the one before you is entitled by public examination to the degree
‘Recognised Talent,’ which may, as a meritorious distinction, be held
equal to your title of a warrior clad in armour. Yet, if it is so held,
that would rightly be this person’s official name of Paik.”

“Oh, it would, would it?” said the one seated upon the high chair.
“That’s quite clear. Are there any other names as well?”

“Assuredly,” I explained, pained inwardly that one of official rank
should so slightly esteem my appearance as to judge that I was so
meagrely endowed. “The milk name of Ho; Tsin upon entering the Classes;
as a Great Name Cheng; another style in Quank; the official title
already expressed, and T’chun, Li, Yuen and Nung as the various
emergencies of life arise.”

“Thank you,” said the high-chair official courteously. “Now, just the
name in full, please, without any velvet trimmings.”

“Kong,” began this person, desirous above all things of putting
the matter competently, yet secretly perturbed as to what might be
considered superfluous and what deemed a perfidious suppression, “Ho
Tsin Cheng Quank--”

“Hold hard,” cried this same one, restraining me with an uplifted pen.
“Did you say ‘Quack’?”

“Quack?” repeated this person, beginning to become involved within
himself, and not grasping the detail in the right position. “In a manner
of setting the expression forth--”

“Put him down, ‘Quack Duck,’ sir,” exclaimed one of dog-like dejection
who stood by. “Most of these Lascars haven’t got any real names--they
just go by what any one happens to call them at the time, like ‘Burmese
Ike’ down at the Mint,” and this person unfortunately chancing to smile
and bow acquiescently at that moment (not with any set intention, but
as a general principle of courteous urbanity), in place of his really
distinguished titles he will henceforth appear among the historical
records of this dynasty under what he cannot disguise from his inner
misgivings to be the low-caste appellation of Quack Duck.

“Now the address, please,” continued the high one, again preparing to
inscribe the word, and being determined that by no mischance should this
particular be offensively reported, I unhesitatingly replied, “Beneath
the Sign of the Lead Tortoise, on the northern course from the Lotus
Pools outside the walls of Yuen-ping.”

This answer the one with the book did not immediately record. “I
don’t say it isn’t all right when you know the parts,” he remarked
broad-mindedly, “but it does sound a trifle irregular. Can’t you give it
a number and a street?”

“I fancy it must be a pub, sir,” observed another. “He said that it had
a sign--the Red Tortoise.”

“Well, haven’t you got a London address?” said the high one, and this
person being able to supply a street and a number as desired, this part
of the undertaking was disposed of, to his cordial satisfaction.

“Now let me see the articles which these men left with you,” commanded
the chieftain of the band, and without any misleading discrepancies I at
once drew forth from an inner sleeve the two scrips, of which adequate
mention has already been made, another hitherto undescribed, two
instruments for measuring the passing hours of the day, together with a
chain of fine gold ingeniously wrought into the semblance of a cable,
an ornament for the breast, set about with a jewel, two neck-cloths of
a kind usually carried in the pocket, a book for recording happenings of
any moment, pieces of money to the value of about eleven taels, a silver
flagon, a sheathed weapon and a few lesser objects of insignificant
value. These various details I laid obsequiously before the one who had
commanded it, while the others stood around either in explicit silence
or speaking softly beneath their breath.

“Do I understand that the two persons left all these things with you,
while they took your purse in exchange?” said the high official, after
examining certain obscure signs upon the metals, the contents of the
third scrip, and the like.

“It cannot reasonably be denied,” I replied; “inasmuch as they departed
without them.”

“Spontaneously?” he demanded, and in spite of the unevadible severity of
his voice the expression of his nearer eye deviated somewhat.

“The spoken and conclusive word of the first was that it was his
intention to commit to this one’s keeping everything which he had; the
assertion of the second being that with this scrip I received all that
he possessed.”

“While of yours, what did they get, Mr. Quack?” and the tone of the one
who spoke had a much more gratifying modulation than before, while the
attitudes of those who stood around had favourably changed, until they
now conveyed a message of deliberate esteem.

“A serpent-skin case of two enclosures,” I replied. “On the one side
was a handcount of the small copper-pieces of this Island, which I had
caused to be burnished and gilt for the purpose of taking back to amuse
those of Yuen-ping. On the other side were two or three pages from a
gravity-removing printed leaf entitled ‘Bits of Tits,’ with which
this person weekly instructs himself in the simpler rudiments of the
language. For the rest the case was controlled by a hidden spring, and
inscribed about with a charm against loss, consumption by fire, or being
secretly acquired by the unworthy.”

“I don’t think you stand in much need of that charm, Mr. Quack,”
 remarked another of more than ordinary rank, who was also present. “Then
they really got practically no money from you?”

“By no means,” I admitted. “It was never literally stipulated, and
whatever of wealth he possesses this person carries in a concealed spot
beneath his waistbelt.” (For even to these, virtuous sire, I did not
deem it expedient to reveal the fact that in reality it is hidden within
the sole of my left sandal.)

“I congratulate you,” he said with lavish refinement. “Ben and the
Butterman can be very bland and persuasive. Could you tell me, as a
matter of professional curiosity, what first put you on your guard?”

“In this person’s country,” I replied, “there is an apt saying, ‘The
sagacious bird does not build his nest twice in the empty soup-toureen,’
and by observing closely what has gone before one may accurately
conjecture much that will follow after.” It may be, that out of my
insufferable shortcomings of style and expression, this answer did not
convey to his mind the logical sequence of the warning; yet it would
have been more difficult to show him how everything arose from the
faultlessly-balanced system of the heroic Wei Chung, or the exact
parallel lying between the ill-clad outcast who demanded a portion of
tobacco and the cheerfully unassuming stranger who had in his possession
a larger accumulation of money than he could conveniently disperse.

In such a manner I took leave of the station and those connected with
it, after directing that the share of the spoil which fell by the law
of this Island to my lot should be sold and the money of exchange
faithfully divided among the virtuous and necessitous of both sexes. The
higher officials each waved me pleasantly by the hand, according to the
striking and picturesque custom of the land, while the lesser ones stood
around and spoke flattering words as I departed, as “honourable,” “a
small piece of all-right,” “astute ancient male fowl,” “ah!” and the
like.

With repeated assurances that however ineptly the adventure may at the
time appear to be tending, as regards the essentials of true dignity
and an undeviating grasp upon articles of negotiable value, nothing of a
regrettable incident need be feared.

KONG HO.




LETTER IX


 Concerning the proverb of the highly-accomplished horse. The
 various perils to be encountered in the Beneath Parts. The
 inexplicable journey performed by this one, and concerning
 the obscurity of the witchcraft employed.


VENERATED SIRE,--Among these islanders there is a proverb, “Do not place
the carte” (or card, the two words having an identical purport, and
both signifying the inscribed tablet of viands prepared for a banquet,)
“before the horse.” Doubtless the saying first arose as a timely rebuke
to a certain barbarian emperor who announced his contempt for the
intelligence of his subjects by conferring high mandarin rank upon a
favourite steed and ceremoniously appointing it to be his chancellor;
but from the narrower moral that an unreasoning animal is out of place,
and even unseemly, in the entertaining hall or council chamber, the
expression has in the course of time taken a wider application and is
now freely used as an insidious thrust at one who may be suspected of
contrariness of character, of confusing issues, or of acting in a vain
or illogical manner. I had already preserved the saying among other
instances of foreign thought and expression which I am collecting for
your dignified amusement, as it is very characteristic of the wisdom and
humour of these Outer Lands. The imagination is essentially barbaric. A
horse--doubtless well-groomed, richly-caparisoned, and as intellectual
as the circumstances will permit, but inevitably an animal of degraded
attributes and untraceable ancestry--a horse reclining before a lavishly
set-out table and considering well of what dish it shall next partake!
Could anything, it appears, be more diverting! Truly to our more refined
outlook the analogy is lacking both in delicacy of wit and in exactitude
of balance, but to the grosser barbarian conception of what is
gravity-removing it is irresistible.

I am, however, reminded of the saying by perceiving that I was on the
point of recording certain details of recent occurrence without first
unrolling to your mind the incidents from which it has arisen that the
person who is now communicating with you is no longer reposing in the
Capital, but spending a period profitably in observing the habits of
those who dwell in the more secluded recesses on the outskirts of the
Island. This reversal of the proper sequence of affairs would doubtless
strike those around as an instance of setting the banquet before the
horse. Without delay, then, to pursue the allusion to its appropriate
end, I will return, as it may be said, to my nosebag.

At various points about the streets of the Capital there are certain
caverns artificially let into the bowels of the earth, to which any
person may betake himself upon purchasing a printed sign which he must
display to the guardian of the gate. Once within the underneathmost
parts he is free to be carried from place to place by means of the
trains of carriages which I have already described to you, until he
would return to the outer surface, when he must again display his
talisman before he is permitted to pass forth. Nor is this an empty
form, for upon an occasion this person himself witnessed a very bitter
contention between a keeper of the barrier and one whose token had
through some cause lost its potency.

In the company of the experienced I had previously gone through the
trial without mischance, so that recently when I expressed a wish to
visit a certain Palace, and was informed that the most convenient manner
would be to descend into the nearest cavern, I had no reasonable device
for avoiding the encounter. Nevertheless, enlightened sire, I will
not attempt to conceal from your omniscience that I was by no means
impetuous towards the adventure. Owing to the pugnacious and unworthy
suspicions of those who direct their destinies, I have not yet been
able to penetrate the exact connection between the movements of these
hot-smoke chariots and the Unseen Forces. To a person whose chief object
in life is to avoid giving offence to any of the innumerable demons
which are ever on the watch to revenge themselves upon our slightest
indiscretion, this uncertainty opens an unending vista of intolerable
possibilities. As if to emphasise the perils of this overhanging doubt
the surroundings are ingeniously arranged so as to represent as nearly
as practicable the terrors of the Beneath World. Both by day and night a
funereal gloom envelops the caverns, the pathways and resting-places are
meagre and so constructed as to be devoid of attraction or repose, and
by a skilful contrivance the natural atmosphere is secretly withdrawn
and a very acrimonious sulphurous haze driven in to replace it.
In sudden and unforeseen places eyes of fire open and close with
disconcerting rapidity, and even change colour in vindictive
significance; wooden hands are outstretched as in unrelenting rigidity
against supplication, or, divining the unexpressed thoughts, inexorably
point, as one gazes, still deeper into the recesses of the earth; while
the air is never free from the sounds of groans, shrieks, the rattling
of chains, dull, hopeless noises beneath one’s feet or overhead, and the
hoarse wordless cries of despair with which the attending slaves of the
caverns greet the distant clamour of every approaching fire-chariot.
Admittedly the intention of the device is benevolently conceived, and
it is strenuously asserted that many persons of corrupt habits and
ill-balanced lives, upon waking unexpectedly while passing through
these Beneath Parts, have abandoned the remainder of their journey, and,
escaping hastily to the outer air, have from that time onwards led a
pure and consistent existence; but, on the other foot, those who are
compelled to use the caverns daily, freely confess that the surroundings
to not in any material degree purify their lives of tranquillise the
nature of their inner thoughts.

In this emergency I did not neglect to write out a diversity of charms
against every possible variety of evil influence, and concealing them
lavishly about my head and body, I presented myself with the outer
confidence of a person who is inured to the exploit. Doubtless thereby
being mistaken for one of themselves in the obscurity, I received the
inscribed safeguard without opposition, and even an added sum in copper
pieces, which I discreetly returned to the one behind the shutter, with
the request that he would honourably burn a few joss sticks or sacrifice
to a trivial amount, to the success of my journey. In such a manner
I reached an awaiting train, and, taking up within it a position of
retiring modesty, I definitely committed myself to the undertaking.

At the next tarrying place there entered a barbarian of high-class
appearance, and being by this time less assured of my competence in the
matter unaided, both on account of the multiplicity of evil omens on
every side, and the perverse impulses of the guiding demon, whereby
at sudden angles certain of my organs had the emotion of being left
irrevocably behind and others of being snatched relentlessly forward, I
approached him courteously.

“Behold,” I said, “many thousand li of water, both fresh and bitter,
flow between the one who is addressing you and his native town of
Yuen-ping, where the tablets at the street corners are as familiar to
him as the lines of his own unshapely hands; for, as it is truly said,
‘Does the starling know the lotus roots, or the pomfret read its way by
the signs among the upper branches of the pines?’ Out of the necessities
of his ignorance and your own overwhelming condescension enlighten him,
therefore, whether the destination of this fire-chariot by any chance
corresponds with the inscribed name upon his talisman?”

Thus adjured, the stranger benevolently turned himself to the detail,
and upon consulting a book of symbols he expressed himself to this wise:
that after a sufficient interval I should come into a certain station,
called in part after the title of the enlightened ruler of this Island,
and there abandoning the train which was carrying us, I should enter
another which would bring me out of the Beneath Parts and presently into
the midst of that Palace which I sought. This advice seemed good, for
a reasonable connection might be supposed to exist between a station
so auspiciously called and a Palace bearing the harmonious name of
the gracious and universally-revered sovereign-consort. Accordingly I
thanked him ceremoniously, not only on my own part, but also on behalf
of eleven generations of immediate ancestors, and in the name of seven
generations who should come after, and he on his side agreeably replied
that he was sure his grandmother would have done as much for mine, and
he sincerely hoped that none of his great-great-grandchildren would
prove less obliging. In this intellectual manner, varied with the
entertainment of profuse bows, the time passed cordially between us
until the barbarian reached his own alighting stage, when he again
repeated the various details of the strategy for my observance.

At this point let it be set forth deliberately that there existed no
treachery in the advice, still less that this person is incapable of
competently achieving the destined end of any hazard upon which he
may embark when once the guiding signs have been made clear to his
understanding. Whatever entanglement arose was due merely to the
conflicting manners of expression used by two widely-varying races, even
as our own proverb says, “What is only sauce for the cod is serious for
the oyster.”

At the station indicated as bearing the sign of the ruler of the country
(which even a person of little discernment could have recognised by
the highly-illuminated representation bearing the elusively-worded
inscription, “In packets only”), I left this fire-chariot, and at once
perceiving another in an attitude of departure, I entered it, as the
casual barbarian had definitely instructed, and began to assure myself
that I had already become expertly proficient in the art of journeying
among these Beneath Regions and to foresee the time, not far distant,
when others would confidently address themselves to me in their
extremities. So entrancing did this contemplation grow, that this
outrageous person began to compose the actual words with which he would
instruct them as the occasion arose, as thus, “Undoubtedly, O virtuous
and not unattractive maiden, this fire-engine will ultimately lead your
refined footsteps into the street called Those who Bake Food. Do not
hesitate, therefore, to occupy the vacant place by this insignificant
one’s side”; or, “By no means, honourable sir; the Cross of Charing
is in the precisely opposite direction to that selected by this
self-opinionated machine for its inopportune destination. Do not rebuke
this person for his immoderate loss of mental gravity, for your mistake,
though pardonable in a stranger, is really excessively diverting. Your
most prudent course now will assuredly be to cast yourself from the
carriage without delay and rely upon the benevolent intervention of a
fire-chariot proceeding backwards.”

Alas, it is truly said, “None but sword-swallowers should endeavour to
swallow swords,” thereby signifying the vast chasm that lies between
those who are really adroit in an undertaking and those who only think
that they may easily become so. Presently it began to become deeply
impressed upon my discrimination that the journey was taking a more
lengthy duration than I had been given to understand would be the case,
while at the same time a permanent deliverance from the terrors of the
Beneath Parts seemed to be insidiously lengthening out into a funereal
unattainableness. The point of this person’s destination, he had been
assured on all hands, was a spot beyond which even the most aggressively
assertive engine could not proceed, so that he had no fears of being
incapably drawn into more remote places, yet when hour after hour passed
and the ill-destined machine never failed in its malicious endeavours to
leave each successive tarrying station, it is not to be denied that
my imagination dwelt regretfully upon the true civilisation of our
own enlightened country, where, by the considerate intervention of an
all-wise government, the possibilities of so distressing an experience
are sympathetically removed from one’s path. Thus the greater part of
the day had faded, and I was conjecturing that by this time we must
inevitably be approaching the barren and inhospitable country which
forms the northern limit of the Island, when the door suddenly opened
and the barbarian stranger whom I had left many hundred li behind
entered the carriage.

At this manifestation all uncertainty departed, and I now understood
that to some obscure end witchcraft of a very powerful and high-caste
kind was being employed around me; for in no other way was it credible
to one’s intelligence that a person could propel himself through the
air with a speed greater than that of one of these fire-chariots, and
overtake it. Doubtless it was a part of this same scheme which made it
seem expedient to the stranger that he should feign a part, for he
at once greeted me as though the occasion were a matter of everyday
happening, exclaiming genially--

“Well, Mr. Kong, returning? And what do you think of the Palace?”

“It is fitly observed, ‘To the earthworm the rice stalk is as high as
the pagoda,’” I replied with adroit evasion, clearly understanding from
his manner that for some reason, not yet revealed to me, a course of
dissimulation was expedient in order to mislead the surrounding
demons concerning my movements, and by a subtle indication of the face
conveying to the stranger an assurance that I had tactfully grasped
the requirement, and would endeavour to walk well upon his heels,
“and therefore it would be unseemly for a person of my insignificant
attainments to engage in the doubtful flattery of comparing it with
the many other residences of the pure and exalted which embellish your
Capital.”

“Oh,” said the one whom I may now suitably describe by the name of Sir
Philip, “that’s rather a useful proverb sometimes. Many people there?”

At this inquiry I could not disguise from myself an emotion that
the person seated opposite was not diplomatically inspired in so
persistently clinging to the one subject upon which he must assuredly
know that I experienced an all-pervading deficiency. Nevertheless,
being by this more fully convinced that the disguise was one of critical
necessity, and not deeming that the essential ceremonies of one Palace
would differ from those of another, no matter in what land they stood
(while through all I read a clear design on Sir Philip’s part that
the opportunity was craftily arranged so that I might impress upon any
vindictively-intentioned spirits within hearing an assumption of high
protection), I replied that the gathering had been one of unparalleled
splendour, both by reason of the multitude of exalted nobles present
and also owing to the jewelled magnificence lavished on every detail.
Furthermore, I continued, now definitely abandoning all the promptings
of a wise reserve, and reflecting, as we say, that one may as well be
drowned in the ocean as in a wooden bucket, not only did the sublime and
unapproachable sovereign graciously permit me to kow-tow respectfully
before him, but subsequently calling me to his side beneath a canopy of
golden radiance, he conversed genially with me and benevolently assured
me of his sympathetic favour on all occasions (this, I conjectured,
would certainly overawe any Evil Force not among the very highest
circles), while the no less magnanimous Prince of the Imperial Line
questioned me with flattering assiduousness concerning a method of
communicating with persons at a distance by means of blows or stamps
upon a post (as far as the outer meaning conveyed itself to me), the
houses which we build, and whether they contained an adequate provision
of enclosed spaces in the walls.

Doubtless I could have continued in this praiseworthy spirit of delicate
cordiality to an indefinite amount had I not chanced to observe at this
point that the expression of Sir Philip’s urbanity had become entangled
in a variety of other emotions, not all propitious to the scheme,
so that in order to retire imperceptibly within myself I smiled
broad-mindedly, remarking that it was well said that the moon was only
bright while the sun was hid, and that I had lately been dazzled with
the sight of so much brilliance and virtuous condescension that
there were occasions when I questioned inwardly how much I had really
witnessed, and how much had been conveyed to me in the nature of an
introspective vision.

It will already have been made plain to you, O my courtly-mannered
father, that these barbarians are totally deficient in the polite
art whereby two persons may carry on a flattering and highly-attuned
conversation, mutually advantageous to the esteem of each, without it
being necessary in any way that their statements should have more than
an ornamental actuality. So wanting in this, the most concentrated form
of truly well-bred entertainment, are even their high officials,
that after a few more remarks, to which I made answer in a spirit of
skilfully-sustained elusiveness, the utterly obtuse Sir Philip said at
length, “Excuse my asking, Mr. Kong, but have you really been to the
Alexandra Palace at all?”

Admittedly there are few occasions in life on which it is not possible
to fail to see the inopportune or low-class by a dignified impassiveness
of features, an adroitly-directed jest, or a remark of baffling
inconsequence, but in the face of so distressingly straightforward a
demand what can be advanced by a person of susceptible refinement when
opposed to one of incomparably larger dimensions, imprisoned by his side
in the recess of a fire-chariot which is leaping forward with uncurbed
velocity, and surrounded by demons with whose habits and partialities he
is unfamiliar?

“In a manner of expressing the circumstance,” I replied, “it is not to
be denied that this person’s actual footsteps may have imperceptibly
been drawn somewhat aside from the path of his former design. Yet
inasmuch as it is truly said that the body is in all things subservient
to the mind, and is led withersoever it is willed, and as your engaging
directions were scrupulously observed with undeviating fidelity, it
would be impertinently self-opinionated on this person’s part to
imply that they failed to guide him to his destination. Thus, for all
ceremonial purposes, it is permissible conscientiously to assume that he
HAS been there.”

“I am afraid that I must not have been sufficiently clear,” said Sir
Philip. “Did you miss the train at King’s Cross?”

“By no means,” I replied firmly, pained inwardly that he should cast the
shadow of such narrow incompetence upon me. “Seeing this machine on the
point of setting forth on a journey, even as your overwhelming
sagacity had enabled you to predict would be the case, I embarked with
self-reliant confidence.”

“Good lord!” murmured the person opposite, beginning to manifest an
excess of emotion for which I was quite unable to account. “Then you
have been in this train--your actual footsteps I mean, Mr. Kong; not
your ceremonial abstract subliminal ego--ever since?”

To this I replied that his words shone like the moon at midnight with
scintillating points of truth; adding, however, as the courtesies of
the occasion required, that I had been so impressed with the many-sided
brilliance of his conversation earlier in the day as to render the
flight of time practically unnoticed by me.

“But did it never occur to you to ask at one of the stations?” he
demanded, still continuing to wave his hands incapably from side to
side. “Any of the porters would have told you.”

“Kong Li Heng, the founder of our line, who was really great, has been
dead eleven centuries, and no single fact or incident connected with his
life has been preserved to influence mankind,” I replied. “How much less
will it matter, then, even in so limited a space of time as a hundred
years, in what fashion so insignificant a person as the one before you
acted on any occasion, and why, therefore, should he distress himself
unnecessarily to any precise end?” In this manner I sought to place
before him the dignified example of an imperturbability which can be
maintained in every emergency, and at the same time to administer a
plain yet scrupulously-sheathed rebuke; for the inauspicious manner in
which he had first drawn me on to speak confidently of the ceremonies of
the Royal Palace and then held up my inadequacy to undeserved contempt
had not rejoiced my imagination, and I was still uncertain how much to
claim, and whether, perchance, even yet a more subtle craft lay under
all.

“Well, in any case, when you go back you can claim the distinction of
having been taken seven times round London, although you can’t really
have seen much of it,” said Sir Philip. “This is a Circle train.”

At this assertion I looked up. Though admittedly curved a little about
the roof the chariot was in every essential degree what we should
pronounce to be a square one; whereupon, feeling at length that the
involvement had definitely passed to a point beyond my contemptible
discernment, I spread out my hands acquiescently and affably remarked
that the days were lengthening out pleasantly.

In such a manner I became acquainted with the one Sir Philip, and
thereby, in a somewhat circuitous line, the original purpose which
possessed my brush when I began this inept and commonplace letter
is reached; for the person in question not only lay upon himself the
obligation of leading me “by the strings of his apron-garment”--in the
characteristic and fanciful turn of the barbarian language--to that same
Palace on the following day, but thenceforth gracefully affecting to
discern certain agreeable virtues in my conversation and custom of habit
he frequently sought me out. More recently, on the double plea that they
of his household had a desire to meet me, and that if I spent all my
time within the Capital my impressions of the Island would necessarily
be ill-balanced and deformed, he advanced a project that I should
accompany him to a spot where, as far as I was competent to grasp
the idiom, he was in the habit of sitting (doubtless in an abstruse
reverie), in the country; and having assured myself by means of discreet
innuendo that the seat referred to would be adequate for this person
also, and that the occasion did not in any way involve a payment of
money, I at once expressed my willingness towards the adventure.

With numerous expressions of unfeigned regret (from a filial point of
view) that the voice of one of the maidens of the household, lifted
in the nature of a defiance against this one to engage with her in a
two-handed conflict of hong pong, obliges him to bring this immature
composition to a hasty close.

KONG HO.




LETTER X


 Concerning the authority of this high official, Sir Philip.
 The side-slipperyness of barbarian etiquette. The hurl-
 headlong sportiveness and that achieving its end by means of
 curved mallets.


VENERATED SIRE,--If this person’s memory is accurately poised on the
detail, he was compelled to abandon his former letter (when on the point
of describing the customs of these outer places), in order to take part
in a philosophical discussion with some of the venerable sages of the
neighbourhood.

Resuming the narration where it had reached this remote province of
the Empire, it is a suitable opportunity to explain that this same
Sir Philip is here greeted on every side with marks of deferential
submission, and is undoubtedly an official of high button, for whenever
the inclination seizes him he causes prisoners to be sought out, and
then proceeds to administer justice impartially upon them. In the case
of the wealthy and those who have face to lose, the matter is generally
arranged, to his profit and to the satisfaction of all, by the payment
of an adequate sum of money, after the invariable custom of our own
mandarincy. When this incentive to leniency is absent it is usual to
condemn the captive to imprisonment in a cell (it is denied officially,
but there is no reason to doubt that a large earthenware vessel is
occasionally used for this purpose,) for varying periods, though it is
notorious that in the case of the very necessitous they are sometimes
set freely at liberty, and those who took them publicly reprimanded for
accusing persons from whose condition on possible profit could arise.
This confinement is seldom inflicted for a longer period than seven,
fourteen, or twenty-one days (these being lucky numbers,) except in the
case of those who have been held guilty of ensnaring certain birds and
beasts which appear to be regarded as sacred, for they have their duly
appointed attendants who wear a garb and are trained in the dexterous
use of arms, lurking with loaded weapons in secret places to catch the
unwary, both by night and day. Upheld by the high nature of their office
these persons shrink from no encounter and even suffer themselves to be
killed with resolute unconcern; but when successful they are not denied
an efficient triumph, for it is admitted that those whom they capture
are marked men from that time (doubtless being branded upon the body
with the name of their captor), and no future defence is availing. The
third punishment, that of torture, is reserved for a class of solitary
mendicants who travel from place to place, doubtless spreading the germs
of an inflammatory doctrine of rebellion, for, owing to my own degraded
obtuseness, the actual nature of their crimes could never be made clear
to me. Of the tortures employed that known in their language as the
“bath” (for which we have no real equivalent,) is the most dreaded, and
this person has himself beheld men of gigantic proportions, whose bodies
bore the stain of a voluntary endurance to every privation, abandon
themselves to a most ignoble despair upon hearing the ill-destined word.
Unquestionably the infliction is closely connected with our own ordeal
of boiling water, but from other indications it is only reasonable to
admit that there is an added ingredient, of which we probably have no
knowledge, whereby the effect is enhanced in every degree, and the outer
surface of the victim rendered more vulnerable. There is also another
and milder form of torture, known as the “task”, consisting either of
sharp-edged stones being broken upon the body, or else the body broken
upon sharp-edged stones, but precisely which is the official etiquette
of the case this person’s insatiable passion for accuracy and his
short-sighted limitations among the more technical outlines of the
language, prevent him from stating definitely.

Let it here be openly confessed that the intricately-arranged titles
used among these islanders, and the widely-varying dignities which they
convey, have never ceased to embarrass my greetings on all occasions,
and even yet, when a more crystal insight into their strangely illogical
manners enables me not only to understand them clearly myself, but
also to expound their significance to others, a necessary reticence is
blended with my most profuse cordiality, and my salutations to one whom
I am for the first time encountering are now so irreproachably balanced,
that I can imperceptibly develop them into an engaging effusion, or,
without actual offence, draw back into a condition of unapproachable
exclusiveness as the necessity may arise. With us, O my immaculate sire,
a yellow silk umbrella has for three thousand years denoted a fixed and
recognisable title. A mandarin of the sixth degree need not hesitate to
mingle on terms of assured equality with other mandarins of the sixth
degree, and without any guide beyond a seemly instinct he perceives
the reasonableness of assuming a deferential obsequiousness before a
mandarin of the fifth rank, and a counterbalancing arrogance when in the
society of an official who has only risen to the seventh degree, thus
conforming to that essential principle of harmonious intercourse,
“Remember that Chang Chow’s ceiling is Tong Wi’s floor”; but who shall
walk with even footsteps in a land where the most degraded may legally
bear the same distinguished name as that of the enlightened sovereign
himself, where the admittedly difficult but even more purposeless
achievement of causing a gold mine to float is held to be more
praiseworthy than to pass a competitive examination or to compose a
poem of inimitable brilliance, and where one wearing gilt buttons and an
emblem in his hat proves upon ingratiating approach not to be a powerful
official but a covetous and illiterate slave of inferior rank?
Thus, through their own narrow-minded inconsistencies, even the most
ceremoniously-proficient may at times present an ill-balanced attitude.
This, without reproach to himself, concerns the inward cause whereby
the one who is placed to you in the relation of an affectionate and
ever-resourceful son found unexpectedly that he had lost the benignant
full face of a lady of exalted title.

At that time I had formed the acquaintance, in an obscure quarter of the
city, of one who wore a uniform, and was addressed on all sides as the
commander of a band, while the gold letters upon the neck part of his
outer garment inevitably suggested that he had borne an honourable share
in the recent campaign in a distant land. As I had frequently met many
of similar rank drinking tea at the house of the engaging countess to
whom I have alluded, I did not hesitate to prevail upon this Captain
Miggs to accompany me there upon an occasion also, assuring him of
equality and a sympathetic reception; but from the moment of our
arrival the attitudes of those around pointed to the existence of some
unpropitious barrier invisible to me, and when the one with whom I was
associated took up an unassailable position upon the central table,
and began to speak authoritatively upon the subject of The Virtues,
the unenviable condition of the proud and affluent, and the myriads of
fire-demons certainly laying in wait for those who partook of spiced tea
and rich foods in the afternoon, and did not wear a uniform similar to
his own, I began to recognise that the selection had been inauspiciously
arranged. Upon taxing some around with the discrepancy (as there seemed
to be no more dignified way of evading the responsibility), they were
unable to contend against me that there were, indeed, two, if not more,
distinct varieties of those bearing the rank of captain, and that they
themselves belonged to an entirely different camp, wearing another
dress, and possessing no authority to display the symbol of the letters
S.A. upon their necks. With this admission I was content to leave the
matter, in no way accusing them of actual duplicity, yet so withdrawing
that any of unprejudiced standing could not fail to carry away the
impression that I had been the victim of an unworthy artifice, and had
been lured into their society by the pretext that they were other than
what they really were.

With the bitter-flavoured memory of this, and other in no way dissimilar
episodes, lingering in my throat, it need not be a matter of conjecture
that for a time I greeted warily all who bore a title, a mark of rank,
or any similar appendage; who wore a uniform, weapon, brass helmet,
jewelled crown, coat of distinctive colour, or any excessive superfluity
of pearl or metal buttons; who went forth surrounded by a retinue, sat
publicly in a chair or allegorical chariot, spoke loudly in the highways
and places in a tone of official pronouncement, displayed any feather,
emblem, inscribed badge, or printed announcement upon a pole, or in any
way conducted themselves in what we should esteem to be fitting to
a position of high dignity. From this arose the absence of outward
enthusiasm with which I at first received Sir Philip’s extended
favour; for although I had come to distrust all the reasonable signs of
established power, I distrusted, to a much more enhanced degree, their
complete absence; and when I observed that the one in question was never
accompanied by a band of musicians or flower-strewers, that he mingled
as though on terms of familiar intercourse with the ordinary passers-by
in the streets, and never struck aside those who chanced to impede
his progress, and that he actually preferred those of low condition to
approach him on their feet, rather than in the more becoming attitude
of unconditional prostration, I reasoned with myself whether indeed he
could consistently be a person of well-established authority, or whether
I was not being again led away from my self-satisfaction by another
obliquity of barbarian logic. It was for this reason that I now welcomed
the admitted power which he has of incriminating persons in a variety
of punishable offences, and I perceived with an added satisfaction
that here, where this privilege is more fully understood, few meet him
without raising their hands to the upper part of their heads in token of
unquestioning submission; or, as one would interpret the symbolism into
actual words, meaning, “Thus, from this point to the underneath part of
our sandals, all between lies in the hollow of your comprehensive hand.”

There is a written jest among another barbarian nation that these among
whom I am tarrying, being by nature a people who take their pleasures
tragically, when they rise in the morning say, one to another, “Come,
behold; it is raining again as usual; let us go out and kill somebody.”
 Undoubtedly the pointed end of this adroit-witted saying may be found
in the circumstance that it is, indeed, as the proverb aptly claims,
raining on practically every occasion in life; while, to complete the
comparison, for many dynasties past this nation has been successfully
engaged in killing people (in order to promote their ultimate benefit
through a momentary inconvenience,) in every part of the world. Thus
the lines of parallel thought maintain a harmonious balance beyond the
general analogy of their sayings; but beneath this may be found an even
subtler edge, for in order to inure themselves to the requirement of a
high destiny their various games and manners of disportment are, with a
set purpose, so rigorously contested that in their progress most of the
weak and inefficient are opportunely exterminated.

There is a favourite and well-attended display wherein two opposing
bands, each clad in robes of a distinctive colour, stand in extended
lines of mutual defiance, and at a signal impetuously engage. The
design of each is by force or guile to draw their opponents into an
unfavourable position before an arch of upright posts, and then surging
irresistibly forward, to carry them beyond the limit and hurl them to
the ground. Those who successfully inflict this humiliation upon their
adversaries until they are incapable of further resistance are hailed
victorious, and sinking into a graceful attitude receive each a golden
cup from the magnanimous hands of a maiden chose to the service, either
on account of her peerless outline, the dignified position of her House,
or (should these incentives be obviously wanting,) because the chief
ones of her family are in the habit of contributing unstintingly to the
equipment of the triumphal band. There is also another kind of strife,
differing in its essentials only so far that all who engage therein are
provided with a curved staff, with which they may dexterously draw their
antagonists beyond the limits, or, should they fail to defend themselves
adequately, break the smaller bones of their ankles. But this form of
encounter, despite the use of these weapons, is really less fatal
than the other, for it is not a permissible act to club an antagonist
resentfully about the head with the staff, nor yet even to thrust
it rigidly against his middle body. From this moderation the public
countenance extended to the curved-pole game is contemptibly meagre when
viewed by the side of the overwhelming multitudes which pour along every
channel in order to witness a more than usually desperate trial of the
hurl-headlong variety (the sight, indeed, being as attractive to these
pale, blood-thirsty foreigners as an unusually large execution is
with us), and as a consequence the former is little reputed save among
maidens, the feeble, and those of timorous instincts.

Thus positioned, regarding a knowledge of their outside amusements, it
has always been one of the most prominent ambitions of this person’s
strategy to avoid being drawn into any encounter. At the same time,
the thought that the maidens of the household here (of whom there are
several, all so attractively proportioned that to compare them in a
spirit of definite preference would be distastefully presumptuous to
this person,) should regard me as one lacking in a sufficient display
of violence was not fragrant to my sense of refinement; so that when
Sir Philip, a little time after our arrival, related to me that on the
following day he and a chosen band were to be engaged in the match of a
cricket game against adversaries from the village, and asked whether I
cared to bear a part in the strife, I grasped the muscles of the upper
part of my left arm with my right hand--as I had frequently seen the
hardy and virile do when the subject of their powers had been raised
questioningly--and replied that I had long concealed an insatiable wish
to take such a part at a point where the conflict would be the most
revengefully contested.

Being thus inflexibly committed it became very necessary to arrange a
well-timed intervention (whether in the nature of bodily disorder, fire,
or demoniacal upheaval, a warning omen, or the death of some of our
chief antagonists), but before doing so I was desirous of understanding
how this contest, which had hitherto remained outside my experience, was
waged.

There is here one of benevolent rotundity in whose authority lie the
cavernous stores beneath the house and the vessels of gold and silver;
of menial rank admittedly, yet exacting a seemly deference from all
by the rich urbanity of his voice and the dignity of his massive
proportions. In the affable condescension of his tone, and the
discriminating encouragement of his attitude towards me on all
occasions, I have read a sympathetic concern over my welfare. Him I now
approached, and taking him aside, I first questioned him flatteringly
about his age and the extent of his yearly recompense, and then casually
inquired what in his language he would describe the nature of a cricket
to be.

“A cricket?” repeated the obliging person readily; “a cricket, sir, is a
hinsect. Something, I take it, after the manner of a grass-’opper.”

“Truly,” I agreed. “It is aptly likened. And, to continue the simile, a
game cricket--?”

“A game cricket?” he replied; “well, sir, naturally a game one would be
more gamier than the others, wouldn’t it?”

“The inference is unflinching,” I admitted, and after successfully
luring away his mind from any significance in the inquiry by asking him
whether the gift of a lacquered coffin or an embroidered shroud would be
the more regarded on parting, I left him.

His words, esteemed, for a definite reason were as the jade-clappered
melody of a silver bell. This trial of sportiveness, it became
clear,--less of a massacre than most of their amusements--is really
a rivalry of leapings and dexterity of the feet: a conflict of game
crickets or grass-hoppers, in the somewhat wide-angled obscurity of
their language, or, as we would more appropriately call it doubtless,
a festive competition in the similitude of high-spirited locusts. To
whatever degree the surrounding conditions might vary, there could no
longer be a doubt that the power of leaping high into the air was
the essential constituent of success in this barbarian match of
crickets--and in such an accomplishment this person excelled from the
time of his youth with a truly incredible proficiency. Can it be a
reproach, then, that when I considered this, and saw in a vision the
contempt of inferiority which I should certainly be able to inflict
upon these native crickets before the eyes of their maidens, even
the accumulated impassiveness of thirty-seven generations of Kong
fore-fathers broke down for the moment, and unable to restrain every
vestige of emotion I crept unperceived to the ancestral hall of Sir
Philip and there shook hands affectionately with myself before each of
the nine ironclad warriors about its walls before I could revert to
a becoming state of trustworthy unconcern. That night in my own upper
chamber I spent many hours in testing my powers and studying more
remarkable attitudes of locust flight, and I even found to be within
myself some new attainments of life-like agility, such as feigning the
continuous note of defiance with which the insect meets his adversary,
as remaining poised in the air for an appreciable moment at the summit
of each leap, and of conveying to the body a sudden and disconcerting
sideway movement in the course of its ascent. So immersed did I become
in the achievement of a high perfection that, to my never-ending
self-reproach, I failed to notice a supernatural visitation of undoubted
authenticity; for the next morning it was widely admitted that a certain
familiar demon of the house, which only manifests its presence on
occasions of tragic omen, had been heard throughout the night in
warning, not only beating its head and body against the walls and
doors in despair, but raising from time to time a wailing cry of
soul-benumbing bitterness.

With every assurance that the next letter, though equally distorted
in style and immature in expression, will contain the record of a
deteriorated but ever upward-striving son’s ultimate triumph.

KONG HO.




LETTER XI


 Concerning the game which we should call “Locusts,” and the
 deeper significance of its acts. The solicitous warning of
 one passing inwards and the complication occasioned by his
 ill-chosen words. Concerning that victory already dimly
 foreshadowed.


VENERATED SIRE,--This barbarian game of agile grass-hoppers is not
conducted in the best spirit of a really well-balanced display, and
although the one now inscribing his emotions certainly achieved a wide
popularity, and wore his fig leaves with becoming modesty, he has never
since been quite free from an overhanging doubt that the compliments and
genial remarks with which he was assailed owed their modulation to an
unsubstantial atmosphere of two-edged significance which for a period
enveloped all whom he approached; as in the faces of maidens concealed
behind fans when he passed, the down-drawn lips and up-raised eyes
of those of fuller maturity, the practice in most of his own kind
of turning aside, pressing their hands about their middle parts, and
bending forward into a swollen attitude devoid of grace, on the spur of
a sudden remembrance, and in the auspicious but undeniably embarrassing
manner in which all the unfledged ones of the village clustered about
his retiring footsteps, saluting him continually as one “James,” upon
whom had been conferred the gratifying title of “Sunny.” Thus may the
outline of the combat be recounted.

From each opposing group eleven were chosen as a band, and we of our
company putting on a robe of distinctive green (while they elected to
be regarded as an assemblage of brown crickets), we presently came to a
suitable spot where the trial was to be decided. So far this person
had reasonably assumed that at a preconcerted signal the contest would
begin, all rising into the air together, uttering cries of menace,
bounding unceasingly and in every way displaying the dexterity of our
proportions. Indeed, in the reasonableness of this expectation it cannot
be a matter for reproach to one of the green grass-hoppers--who need not
be further indicated--that he had already begun a well-simulated note
of challenge to those around clad in brown, and to leap upwards in
a preparatory essay, when the ever-alert Sir Philip took him
affectionately by the arm, on the plea that the seclusion of a
neighbouring pavilion afforded a desirable shade.

Beyond that point it is difficult to convey an accurately grouped and
fully spread-out design of the encounter. In itself the scheme and
intention of counterfeiting the domestic life and rivalries of two
opposing bands of insects was pleasantly conceived, and might have been
carried out with harmonious precision, but, after the manner of these
remote tribes, the original project had been overshadowed and the purity
of the imagination lost beneath a mass of inconsistent detail. To
this imperfection must it be laid that when at length this person was
recalled from the obscurity of the pagoda and the alluring society of
a maiden of the village, to whom he was endeavouring to expound the
strategy of the game, and called upon to engage actively in it, he
courteously admitted to those who led him forth that he had not the most
shadowy-outlined idea of what was required of him.

Nevertheless they bound about his legs a frilled armour, ingeniously
fashioned to represent the ribbed leanness of the insect’s shank,
encased his hands and feet in covers to a like purpose, and pressing
upon him a wooden club indicated that the time had come for him to
prove his merit by venturing alone into the midst of the eleven brown
adversaries who stood at a distance in poised and expectant attitudes.

Assuredly, benignant one, this sport of contending locusts began, as one
approached nearer to it, to wear no more pacific a face than if it had
been a carnage of the hurl-headlong or the curved-hook varieties. In
such a competition, it occurred to him, how little deference would be
paid to this one’s title of “Established Genius,” or how inadequately
would he be protected by his undoubted capacity of leaping upwards,
and even in a sideway direction, for no matter how vigorously he
might propel himself, or how successfully he might endeavour to remain
self-sustained in the air, the ill-destined moment could not be long
deferred when he must come down again into the midst of the eleven--all
doubtless concealing weapons as massive and fatally-destructive as his
own. This prospect, to a person of quiescent taste, whose chief
delight lay in contemplating the philosophical subtleties of the higher
Classics, was in itself devoid of glamour, but with what funereal
pigments shall he describe his sinking emotions when one of his own
band, approaching him as he went, whispered in his ear, “Look out at
this end; they kick up like the very devil. And their man behind the
wicket is really smart; if you give him half a chance he’ll have
your stumps down before you can say ‘knife.’” Shorn of its uncouth
familiarity, this was a charitable warning that they into whose
stronghold I was turning my footsteps--perhaps first deceiving my
alertness with a proffered friendship--would kick with the ferocity of
untamed demons, and that one in particular, whose description, to my
added despair, I was unable to retain, was known to possess a formidable
knife, with which it was his intention to cut off this person’s legs at
the first opportunity, before he could be accused of the act. Truly, “To
one whom he would utterly destroy Buddha sends a lucky dream.”

Behind lay the pagoda (though the fact that this one did admittedly turn
round for a period need not be too critically dwelt upon), with three
tiers of maidens, some already waving their hands as an encouraging
token; on each side a barrier of prickly growth inopportunely presented
itself, while in front the eleven kicking crickets stood waiting, and
among them lurked the one grasping a doubly-edged blade of a highly
proficient keenness.

There are occasional moments in the life of a person when he as the
inward perception of retiring for a few paces and looking back in order
to consider his general appearance and to judge how he is situated
with regard to himself, to review his past life in a spirit of judicial
severity, to arrange definitely upon a future composed entirely of acts
of benevolence, and to examine the working of destiny at large. In such
a scrutiny I now began to understand that it would perhaps have been
more harmonious to my love of contemplative repose if I had considered
the disadvantages closer before venturing into this barbarian region,
or, at least, if I had used the occasion profitably to advance an
argument tending towards a somewhat fuller allowance of taels from your
benevolent sleeve. Our own virtuous and flower-strewn land, it is true,
does not possess an immunity from every trifling drawback. The Hoang
Ho--to concede specifically the existence of some of these--frequently
bursts through its restraining barriers and indiscriminately sweeps
away all those who are so ill-advised as to dwell within reach of its
malignant influence. From time to time wars and insurrections are found
to be necessary, and no matter how morally-intentioned and humanely
conducted, they necessarily result in the violation, dismemberment or
extirpation of many thousand polite and dispassionate persons who have
no concern with either side. Towns are repeatedly consumed by fire,
districts scourged by leprosy, and provinces swept by famine. The storms
are admittedly more fatal than elsewhere, the thunderbolts larger, more
numerous, and all unerringly directed, while the extremities of heat and
cold render life really uncongenial for the greater part of each year.
The poor, having no money to secure justice, are evilly used, whereas
the wealthy, having too much, are assailed legally by the gross
and powerful for the purpose of extorting their riches. Robbers and
assassins lurk in every cave; vast hoards of pirates blacken the surface
of every river; and mandarins of the nine degrees must make a livelihood
by some means or other. By day, therefore, it is inadvisable to go forth
and encounter human beings, while none but the shallow-headed would risk
a meeting with the countless demons and vampires which move by night. To
one who has spent many moons among these foreign apparitions the absence
of drains, roads, illustrated message-parchments, maidens whose voices
may be heard protesting upon ringing a wire, loaves of conflicting
dimensions, persons who strive to put their faces upon every
advertisement, pens which emit fountains when carried in the pocket,
a profusion of make-strong foods, and an Encyclopaedia Mongolia, may
undoubtedly be mentioned as constituting a material deficiency. Affairs
are not being altogether reputably conducted during the crisis; it can
never be quite definitely asserted what the next action of the versatile
and high-spirited Dowager Empress will be; and here it is freely
contended that the Pure and Immortal Empire is incapable of remaining
in one piece for much longer. These, and other inconveniences of a like
nature, which the fastidious might distort into actual hardships, have
never been denied, yet at no period of the nine thousand years of our
civilisation has it been the custom to lure out the unwary, on the plea
of an agreeable entertainment, and then to abandon him into the society
of eleven club-bearing adversaries, one of whom may be depicted as in
the act of imparting an unnecessary polish to the edge of his already
preternaturally acute weapon, while those of his own band offer no
protection, and three tiers of very richly-dressed maidens encourage him
to his fate by refined gestures of approval.

Doubtless this person had unconsciously allowed his inner meditations
to carry him away, as it may be expressed, for when he emerged from this
strain of reverie it was to discover himself in the chariot-road and--so
incongruously may be the actions when the controlling intelligence is
withdrawn--even proceeding at a somewhat undignified pace in a direction
immediately opposed to an encounter with the brown locusts. From
this mortifying position he was happily saved by emerging from these
thought-dreams before it was too late to return, and, also, if the
detail is not too insignificant to be related, by the fact that certain
chosen runners from his own company had reached a point in the road
before him, and now stood joining their outstretched arms across the
passage and raising gravity-dispelling cries. Smiling acquiescently,
therefore, this person returned in their midst, and receiving a new
weapon, his own club having been absent-mindedly mislaid, he again set
forth warily to the encounter.

Yet in this he did not altogether neglect a discreet prudence. The
sympathetic person to whom he was indebted for the pointed allusion had
specifically declared that they who used their feet with the desperate
savagery of baffled spectres guarded the nearer limits of their
position, the intention of his timely hint assuredly being that I should
seek to approach from the opposite end, where, doubtless, the more
humane and conciliatory grass-hoppers were assembled. Thus guided I now
set forth in a widely-circuitous direction, having the point where I
meant to open an attack clearly before my eyes, yet seeking to deliver
a more effective onslaught by reaching it to some extent unperceived and
to this end creeping forward in the protecting shadow of the long grass
and untrimmed herbage.

Whether the one already referred to had incapably failed to express his
real meaning, or whether he was tremulous by nature and inordinately
self-deficient, concerns the narration less than the fact that he had
admittedly produced a state of things largely in excess of the actual.
There is no longer any serviceable pretext for maintaining that
those guarding any point of their position were other than mild and
benevolent, while the only edged weapon displayed was one courteously
produced to aid this person’s ineffectual struggles to extricate himself
when, by some obscure movement, he had most ignobly entangled his
pigtail about the claws of his sandal.

Ignorant of this, the true state of things, I was still advancing subtly
when one wearing the emblems of our band appeared from among the brown
insects and came towards me. “Courage!” I exclaimed in a guarded tone,
raising my head cautiously and rejoiced to find that I should not be
alone. “Here is one clad in green bearing succour, who will, moreover,
obstinately defend his stumps to the last extremity.”

“That’s right,” replied the opportune person agreeably; “we need a few
like that. But do get up on your hind legs and come along, there’s a
good fellow. You can play at bears in the nursery when we get back, if
you want.”

Certainly one can simulate the movements of wild animals in a
market-garden if the impersonation is thought to be desirable, yet
the reasonable analogy of the saying is elusive in the extreme, and
I followed the ally who had thus betrayed my presence with a deep-set
misgiving although in the absence of a more trustworthy guide, and in
the suspicion that some point of my every ordinary strategy had been
inept, I was compelled to mould myself identically into his advice.

Scarcely had he left me, and I was endeavouring to dispel any idea of
treachery towards those about by actions of graceful courtesy, when
one--unworthy of burial--standing a score of paces distant, (to whom,
indeed, this person was at the moment bowing with almost passionate
vehemence, inspired by the conviction that he, for his part, was
engaged in a like attention,) suddenly cast a missile--which, somewhat
double-facedly, he had hitherto held concealed in his closed hand--with
undeviating force and accuracy. So unexpected was the movement,
so painfully-impressed the vindictive contact, that I should have
instinctively seized the offensively-directed object and contemptuously
hurled it back again, if the consequence of the blow had not deprived
my mind of all retaliatory ambitions. In this emergency was manifested
a magnanimous act worthy of the incense of a poem, for a person standing
immediately by, seeing how this one was balanced in his emotions, picked
up the missile, and although one of the foremost of the opposing band,
very obligingly flung it back at the assailant. Even an outcast would
not have passed this without a suitable tribute, and turning to him,
I was remarking appreciatively that men were not divided by seas and
wooden barriers, but by the unchecked and conflicting lusts of the mind,
when the unclean and weed-nurtured traitor twenty paces distant, taking
a degraded advantage from this person’s attitude, again propelled his
weapon with an even more concentrated perfidy than before. At this new
outrage every brown cricket shrank from the attitude of alert vigour
which hitherto he had maintained, and as though to disassociate
themselves from the stain of complicity all crossed over and took up new
positions.

Up to this point, majestic head, in order to represent the adventure
in its proper sequence, it has been advisable to present the details as
they arose before the eyes of a reliable and dispassionate gazer. Now,
however, it is no less seemly to declare that this barbarian sport
of leaping insects is not so discreditably shallow as it had at first
appeared, while in every action there may be found an apt but hidden
symbol. Thus the presence of the two green locusts in the midst of
others of a dissimilar nature represents the unending strife by which
even the most pacific are ever surrounded. The fragile erection of
sticks (behind which this person at first sought to defend himself
until led into a more exposed position by one garbed in white,) may be
regarded as the home and altar, and adequately depicts the hollowness
of the protection it affords and the necessity of reliantly emerging to
defy an invader rather than lurking discreditably among its recesses.
The missile is the equivalent of a precise and immediate danger, the
wooden club the natural instinct for defence with which all living
creatures are endowed, so that when the peril is for the time driven
away the opportunity is at hand for the display of virtuous amusements,
the exchanging of hospitality, and the beating of professional drums as
we would say. Thus, at the next attack the one sharing the enterprise
with me struck the missile so proficiently that its recovery engaged the
attention of all our adversaries, and then began to exhibit his powers
by running and leaping towards me. Recognising that the actual moment of
the display had arrived, this person at once emitted a penetrating cry
of concentrated challenge, and also began to leap upwards and about,
and with so much energy that the highly achieved limits of his flight
surprised even himself.

As for the bystanders, esteemed, those who opposed us, and the members
of our own band, although this leaping sportiveness is a competition
more regarded and practised among all orders than the pursuit of
commercial eminence, or even than the allurements of the sublimest
Classics, it may be truly imagined that never before had they witnessed
so remarkable a game cricket. From the pagoda a loud cry of wonder
acclaimed the dexterity of this person’s efforts; the three tiers of
maidens climbed one upon another in their anxiety to lose no detail of
the adventure, and outstanders from distant points began to assemble.
The brown enemy at once abandoned themselves to a panic, and for the
most part cast themselves incapably to the ground, rolling from side to
side in an access of emotion; the two arbiters clad in white conferred
together, doubtless on the uselessness of further contest, while the
ally who had summoned me to take a part instead of being encouraged to
display his agility in a like manner continued to run slavishly from
point to point, while I overcame the distances in a series of inspired
bounds.

In the meanwhile the sounds of encouragement from the ever-increasing
multitude grew like the falling of a sudden coast storm among the ripe
leaves of a tea-plantation, and with them the voices of many calling
upon my name and inciting me to further and even higher achievements
reached my ears. Not to grow small in the eyes of these estimable
persons I continued in my flight, and abandoning all set movements and
limits, I began to traverse the field in every direction, becoming more
proficient with each effort, imparting to myself a sideway and even
backward motion while yet in the upper spaces, remaining poised for an
appreciable period, and lightly, yet with graceful ease, avoiding the
embraces of those who would have detained me. Undoubtedly I could have
maintained this supremacy until our band might justly have claimed the
reward, had not the flattering cries of approval caused an indiscreet
mistake, for the alarm being spread in the village that a conflagration
of imposing ferocity was raging, an ornamental chariot conveying a band
of warriors clad in brass armour presently entered into the strife, and
discovering no fire to occupy their charitable energies they misguidedly
honoured this offensive person by propelling a solid column of the
purest and most refreshing water against his ignoble body when at the
point of his highest flight. This introduction of a thunderbolt into the
everyday life of an insect must be of questionable authenticity, yet
not feeling sufficiently instructed in the lesser details of the
sportiveness to challenge the device, I suffered myself to be led
towards the pavilion with no more struggling than enough to remove the
ignominy of an unresisting surrender, pleasantly remarking to those
who bore me along that to a person of philosophical poise the written
destiny was as apparent in the falling leaf as in the rising sun,
pointing the saying thus: “Although the Desert of Shan-tz is boundless,
and mankind number a million million, yet in it Li-hing encountered his
mother-in-law.” Changing to meet another of our company setting forth
with a club to make the venture, I was permitted for a moment to
engage him; whereupon thrusting into his hand a leather charm against
ill-directed efforts, and instructing him to bind it about his head, I
encouraged him with the imperishable watch-word of the Emperor Tsin Su,
“The stars are indeed small, but their light carries as far as that of
the full moon.”

At the steps of the pagoda so great was the throng of those who would
have overwhelmed me with their gracious attention, that had not this
person’s neck become practically automatic by ceaseless use of late, he
would have been utterly unequal to the emergency. As it was, he could
only bestow a superficial hand-wave upon a company of gold-embroidered
musicians who greeted his return with appropriate melody, and a glance
of well-indicated regret that he had no fuller means of conveying his
complicated emotions, in the direction of the uppermost tier of maidens.
Then the awaiting Sir Philip took him firmly towards the inner part of
the pavilion, and announced, so adroitly and with such high-spirited
vigour had this one maintained the conflict, that it had been resolutely
agreed on all sides not to make a test of his competence any further.

Thereupon a band of very sumptuously arrayed nymphs drew near with
offerings of liquid fat and a variety of crimson fruit, which it is
customary to grind together on the platter--unapproachable in the
result, certainly, yet incredibly elusive to the unwary in the manner of
bruising, and practically ineradicable upon the more delicate shades
of silk garment. In such a situation the one who is now relating the
various incidents of the day may be imagined by a broad-minded and
affectionate sire: partaking of this native fruit and oil, and from time
to time expressing his insatiable anguish that he continually fails
to become more proficient in controlling the oblique movements of the
viands, while the less successful crickets are constrained to persevere
in the combat, and the ever-present note of evasive purport is raised
by a voice from behind a screen exclaiming, “Out afore? That he may have
been, but do he think we was a-going to give he out afore? No, maaster,
us doant a-have a circus every day hereabouts.”

Thus may this imagination of competitive locusts be set forth to
the end. If a fuller proof of what an unostentatious self-effacement
hesitates to enlarge upon were required, it might be found in the
barbarian printed leaf, for the next day this person saw a public record
of the strife, in which his own name was followed by a numerical emblem
signifying that he had not stumbled or proved incompetent in any one
particular. Sir Philip, I beheld with pained surprise, had obtusely
suffered himself to be caught out in the committal of fifty-nine set
offences.

With a not unnatural anticipation that, as a result of this painstaking
description, this person will find two well-equipped camps of contending
locusts in Yuen-ping on his return.

KONG HO.




LETTER XII


 Concerning the obvious misunderstanding which has entwined
 itself about a revered parent’s faculties of passionless
 discrimination. The all-water disportment and the two, of
 different sexes, who after regarding me conflictingly from
 the beginning, ended in a like but inverted manner.


VENERATED SIRE,--Your gem-adorned letter containing a thousand burnished
words of profuse reproach has entered my diminished soul in the form
of an equal number of rusty barbs. Can it be that the incapable
person whom, as you truly say, you sent, “to observe the philosophical
subtleties of the barbarians, to study their dynastical records and to
associate liberally with the venerable and dignified,” has, in your
own unapproachable felicity of ceremonial expression, “according to
a discreet whisper from many sources, chiefly affected the society of
tea-house maidens, the immature of both sexes, doubtful characters of
all classes, and criminals awaiting trial; has evinced an unswerving
affinity towards light amusement and entertainments of a no-class kind;
and in place of a wise aloofness, befitting a wearer of the third Gold
Button and the Horn Belt-clasp, in situations of critical perplexity,
seems by his own ingenuous showing to have maintained an unparalleled
aptitude for behaving either with the crystalline simplicity of a
Kan-su earth-tiller, or the misplaced buffoonery of a seventh-grade
body-writher taking the least significant part in an ill-equipped Swatow
one-cash Hall of Varied Melodies.” Assuredly, if your striking and
well-chosen metaphors were not more unbalanced than the ungainly
attitude of a one-legged hunchback crossing a raging torrent by means
of a slippery plank on a stormy night, they would cause the very acutest
bitterness to the throat of a dutiful and always high-stepping son.
There is an apt saying, however, “A quarrel between two soldiers in the
market-place becomes a rebellion in the outskirts,” and when this person
remembers that many thousand li of mixed elements flow between him and
his usually correct and dispassionate sire, he is impelled to take a
mild and tolerant attitude towards the momentary injustice brought about
by the weakness of approaching old age, the vile-intentioned mendacity
of outcasts envious of the House of Kong, and, perchance, the irritation
brought on by a too lavish indulgence in your favourite dish of stewed
mouse.

Having thus re-established himself in the clear-sighted affection of an
ever mild and perfect father, and cleansed the ground of all possible
misunderstandings in the future, this person will concede the fact that,
not to stand beneath the faintest shadow of an implied blemish in your
sympathetic eyes, he had no sooner understood the attitude in which he
had been presented than he at once plunged into the virtuous society of
a band of the sombre and benevolent.

These, so far as his intelligence enables him to grasp the position,
may be reasonably accepted as the barbarian equivalent of those very
high-minded persons who in our land devote their whole lives secretly
to killing others whom they consider the chief deities do not really
approve of; for although they are not permitted here, either by written
law or by accepted custom, to perform these meritorious actions, they
are so intimately initiated into the minds and councils of the Upper
Ones that they are able to pronounce very severe judgments of torture--a
much heavier penalty than merely being assassinated--upon all who remain
outside their league. As some of the most objurgatory of these alliances
do not number more than a score of persons, it is inevitable that the
ultimate condition of the whole barbarian people must be hazardous in
the extreme.

Having associated myself with this class sufficiently to escape their
vindictive pronouncements, and freely professed an unswerving adherence
to their rites, I next sought out the priests of other altars, intending
by a seemly avowal to each in turn to safeguard my future existence
effectually. This I soon discovered to be beyond the capacity of an
ordinary lifetime, for whereas we, with four hundred million subjects
find three religions to be sufficient to meet every emergency, these
irresolute island children, although numbering us only as one to ten,
vacillate among three hundred; and even amid this profusion it is
asserted that most of the barbarians are unable to find any temple
exactly conforming to their requirements, and after writing to the paper
to announce the fact, abandon the search in despair.

It was while I was becoming proficient in the inner subtleties of one
of these orders--they who drink water on all occasions and wear a
badge--that a maiden of some authority among them besought my aid for
the purpose of amusing a band which she was desirous of propitiating
into the adoption of this badge. It is possible that in the immature
confidence of former letters this person may already have alluded to
certain maidens with words of courteous esteem, but it is now necessary
to admit finally that in the presence of this same Helena they would
all appear as an uninviting growth of stunted and deformed poppies
surrounding a luxuriant chrysanthemum. At the presumptuous thought of
describing her illimitable excellences my fingers become claw-like in
their confessed inadequacy to hold a sufficiently upright brush; yet
without undue confidence it may be set down that her hands resembled the
two wings of a mandarin drake in their symmetrical and changing motion,
her hair as light and radiant-pointed as the translucent incense cloud
floating before the golden Buddha of Shan-Si, thin white satin stretched
tightly upon polished agate only faintly comparable to her jade cheeks,
while her eyes were more unfathomable than the crystal waters of the
Keng-kiang, and within their depths her pure and magnanimous thoughts
could be dimly seen to glide like the gold and silver carp beneath the
sacred river.

When this insurpassable being approached me with the flattering
petition already alluded to, my gratified emotions clashed together
uncontrollably with the internal feeling of many volcanoes in movement,
and my organs of expression became so entangled at the condescension of
her melodious voice being directly addressed to one so degraded, that
for several minutes I was incapable of further acquiescence than that
conveyed by an adoring silence and an unchanging smile. No formality
appeared worthy to greet her by, no expression of self-contempt
sufficiently offensive to convey to her enlightenment my own sense of
a manifold inferiority, and doubtless I should have remained in a
transfixed attitude until she had at length turned aside, had not your
seasonable reference to a Swatow limb-contorter struck me heavily and
abruptly turned off the source of my agreement. Might not this all-water
entertainment, it occurred to this one, consist in enticing him to drink
a potion made unsuspectedly hot, in projecting him backwards into a vat
of the same liquid, or some similar device for the pleasurable amusement
of those around, which would come within the boundaries of your refined
disapproval? As one by himself there was no indignity that this person
would not cheerfully have submitted to, but the inexorable cords of an
ingrained filial regard suddenly pulled him sideways and into another
direction.

“But, Mr. Kong,” exclaimed the bee-lipped maiden, when I had explained
(as being less involved to her imagination,) that I was under a vow,
“we have been relying upon you. Could you not”--and here she dropped her
eyes and picked them up again with a fluttering motion which our lesser
ones are, to an all-wise end, quite unacquainted with--“could you not
unvow yourself for one night, just to please ME?”

At these words, the illuminated proficiency of her glance, and her
honourable resolution to implicate me in the display by head or feet,
the ever-revered image of a just and obedience-loving father ceased to
have any further tangible influence. Let it be remembered that there
is a deep saying, “A virtuous woman will cause more evil than ten river
pirates.” As for the person who is recording his incompetence, the room
and all those about began to engulf him in an ever-increasing circular
motion, his knees vibrated together with unrestrained pliancy, and
concentrating his voice to indicate by the allegory some faint measure
of his emotion, he replied passionately, “Let the amusement referred to
take the form of sitting in a boiling cauldron exposed to the derision
of all beholders, this one will now enter it wearing yellow silk
trousers.”

It is characteristic of these illogical out-countries that the all-water
diversion did not, as a matter to record, concern itself with that
liquid in any detail, beyond the contents of a glass vessel from which a
venerable person, who occupied a raised chair, continually partook. This
discriminating individual spoke so confidently of the beneficial action
of the fluid, and so unswervingly described my own feelings at the
moment--as of head giddiness, an inexactitude of speech, and no clear
definition of where the next step would be arrived at--as the common
lot of all who did not consume regularly, that when that same Helena
had passed on to speak to another, I left the hall unobserved and drank
successive portions, in each case, as the night was cold, prudently
adding a measure of the native rice spirit. His advice had been
well-directed, for with the fourth portion I suddenly found all
doubtful and oppressive visions withdrawn, and a new and exhilarating
self-confidence raised in their place. In this agreeable temper I
returned to the place of meeting to find a priest of one of the lesser
orders relating a circumstance whereby he had encountered a wild maiden
in the woods, who had steadfastly persisted that she was one of a
band of seven (this being the luckiest protective number among the
superstitious). Though unable to cause their appearance, she had gone
through a most precise examination at his hands without deviating in the
slightest particular, whereupon distrusting the outcome of the strife,
the person who was relating the adventure had withdrawn breathless.

When this versatile lesser priest had finished the narration, and
the applause, which clearly showed that those present approved of the
solitary maiden’s discreet stratagem, had ceased, the one who occupied
the central platform, rising, exclaimed loudly, “Mr. Kong will next
favour us with a contribution, which will consist, I am informed, of a
Chinese tale.”

Now there chanced to be present a certain one who had already become
offensive to me by the systematic dexterity with which he had planted
his inopportune shadow between the sublime-souled Helena and any other
who made a movement to approach her heaven-dowered outline. When this
presumptuous and ill-nurtured outcast, who was, indeed, then seated
by the side of the enchanting maiden last referred to, heard the
announcement he said in a voice feigned to reach her peach-skin ear
alone, yet intentionally so modulated as to penetrate the furthest limit
of the room, “A Chinese tale! Why, assuredly, that must be a pig-tail.”
 At this unseemly shaft many of those present allowed themselves to
become immoderately amused, and even the goat-like sage who had
called upon my name concealed his face behind an open hand, but the
amiably-disposed Helena, after looking at the undiscriminating youth
coldly for a moment, deliberately rose and moved to a vacant spot at a
distance. Encouraged by this fragrant act of sympathy I replied with a
polite bow to indicate the position, “On the contrary, the story which
it is now my presumptuous intention to relate will contain no reference
whatever to the carefully-got-up one occupying two empty seats in the
front row,” and without further introduction began the history of Kao
and his three brothers, to which I had added the title, “The Three
Gifts.”

At the conclusion of this classical example of the snares ever lying
around the footsteps of the impious, I perceived that the jocular
stripling, whom I had so delicately reproved, was no longer present.
Doubtless he had been unable to remain in the same room with the
commanding Helena’s high-spirited indignation, and anticipating that in
consequence there would now be no obstacle to her full-faced benignity,
I drew near with an appropriate smile.

It is somewhere officially recorded, “There is only one man who knew
with accurate certainty what a maiden’s next attitude would be, and he
died young of surprise.” As I approached I had the sensation of passing
into so severe an atmosphere of rigid disfavour, that the ingratiating
lines upon my face became frozen in its intensity, despite the ineptness
of their expression. Unable to penetrate the cause of my offence, I
made a variety of agreeable remarks, until finding that nothing tended
towards a becoming reconciliation, I gradually withdrew in despair, and
again turned my face in the direction of that same accommodation which I
had already found beneath the sign of an Encompassed Goat. Here, by the
sarcasm of destiny, I encountered the person who had drawn the slighting
analogy between this one’s pig-tail and his ability as a story-teller.
For a brief space of time the ultimate development of the venture
was doubtfully poised, but recognising in each other’s features the
overhanging cloud of an allied pang, the one before me expressed a
becoming contrition for the jest, together with a proffered cup. Not to
appear out-classed I replied in a suitable vein, involving the supply
of more vessels; whereupon there succeeded many more vessels, called for
both singly and in harmonious unison, and the reappearance of numerous
bright images, accompanied by a universal scintillation of meteor-like
iridescence. In this genial and greatly-enlarged spirit we returned
affably together to the hall, and entered unperceived at the moment when
the one who made the announcements was crying aloud, “According to the
programme the next item should have been a Chinese poem, but as Mr. Kong
Ho appears to have left the building, we shall pass him over--”

“What Ho?” exclaimed the somewhat impetuous one by my side, stepping
forward indignantly and mounting the platform in his affectionate zeal.
“No one shall pass over my old and valued friend--this Ho--while I have
a paw to raise. Step forward, Mandarin, and let them behold the inventor
and sole user of the justly far-famed G. R. Ko-Ho hair restorer--sent in
five guinea bottles to any address on receipt of four penny stamps--as
he appeared in his celebrated impersonation of the human-faced Swan at
Doll and Edgar’s. Come on, oh, Ho!”

“Assuredly,” I replied, striving to follow him, “yet with the wary
greeting, ‘Slowly, slowly; walk slowly,’ engraved upon my mind, for the
barrier of these convoluted stairs--” but at this word a band of maidens
passed out hastily, and in the tumult I reached the dais and began
Weng Chi’s immortal verses, entitled “The Meandering Flight,” which had
occupied me three complete days and nights in the detail of rendering
the allusions into well-balanced similitudes and at the same time
preserving the skilful evasion of all conventional rules which raises
the original to so sublime a height.

 The voice of one singing at the dawn;
 The seven harmonious colours in the sky;
 The meeting by the fountain;
 The exchange of gifts, and the sound of the processional drum;
 The emotion of satisfaction in each created being;
 This is the all-prominent indication of the Spring.

 The general disinclination to engage in laborious tasks;
 The general readiness to consume voluminous potions on any
 pretext.
 The deserted appearance of the city and the absence of the
 come-in motion at every door;
 The sportiveness of maidens, and even those of maturer age,
 ethereally clad, upon the shore.
 The avowed willingness of merchants to dispose of their wares
 for half the original sum.
 This undoubtedly is the Summer.

 The yellow tea leaf circling as it falls;
 The futile wheeling of the storm-tossed swan;
 The note of the marble lute at evening by the pool;
 The immobile cypress seen against the sun.
 The unnecessarily difficult examination paper.
 All these things are suggestive of the Autumn.

 The growing attraction of a well-lined couch.
 The obsequious demeanour of message-bearers, charioteers, and
 the club-armed keepers of peace.
 The explosion of innumerable fire-crackers round the convivial
 shines,
 The gathering together of relations who at all other times
 shun each other markedly.
 The obtrusive recollection of a great many things contrary to
 a spoken vow, and the inflexible purpose to be more
 resolute in future.
 These in turn invariably attend each Winter.

It certainly had not presented itself to me before that the words
“invariably attend” are ill-chosen, but as I would have uttered them
their inelegance became plain, and this person made eight conscientious
attempts to soften down their harsh modulation by various interchanges.
He was still persevering hopefully when he of chief authority approached
and requested that the one who was thus employed and that same other
would leave the hall tranquilly, as the all-water entertainment was
at an end, and an attending slave was in readiness to extinguish the
lanterns.

“Yet,” I protested unassumingly, “that which has so far been expressed
is only in the semblance of an introductory ode. There follow--”

“You must not argue with the Chair,” exclaimed another interposing his
voice. “Whatever the Chair rules must be accepted.”

“The innuendo is flat-witted,” I replied with imperturbable dignity, but
still retaining my hold upon the rail. “When this person so far loses
his sense of proportion as to contend with an irrational object, devoid
of faculties, let the barb be cast. After that introduction dealing with
the four seasons, the twelve gong-strokes of the day are reviewed in a
like fashion. These in turn give place to the days of the month, then
the moons of the year, and finally the years of the cycle.”

“That’s fair,” exclaimed the perverse though well-meaning youth, whom I
was beginning to recognise as the cause of some misunderstanding among
us. “If you don’t want any more of his poem--and I don’t blame you--my
pal Ho, who is one of the popular Flip-Flap Troupe, offers to do some
trick cycle-riding on his ears. What more can you expect?”

“We expect a policeman very soon,” replied another severely. “He has
already been sent for.”

“In that case,” said the one who had so persistently claimed me as
an ally, “perhaps I can do you a service by directing him here”; and
leaving this person to extricate himself by means of a reassuring
silence and some of the larger silver pieces of the Island, he vanished
hastily.

With some doubt whether or not this deviation into the society of the
professedly virtuous, ending as it admittedly does in an involvement,
may not be deemed ill-starred; yet hopeful.

KONG HO.


 THE THREE GIFTS

 Related by Kong Ho on the occasion of the all-water
 disportment, under the circumstances previously set forth.

BEYOND the limits of the township of Yang-chow there dwelt a rich
astrologer named Wei. Reading by his skilful interpretation of the
planets that he would shortly Pass Above, he called his sons Chu, Shan,
and Hing to his side and distributed his wealth impartially among them.
To Chu he gave his house containing a gold couch; to Shan a river with
a boat; to Hing a field in which grew a prolific orange-tree. “Thus
provided for,” he continued, “you will be able to live together in
comfort, the resources of each supplying the wants of the others in
addition to his own requirements. Therefore when I have departed let it
be your first care to sacrifice everything else I leave, so that I also,
in the Upper Air, may not be left destitute.”

Now in addition to these three sons Wei also had another, the youngest,
but one of so docile, respectful, and self-effacing a disposition that
he was frequently overlooked to the advantage of his subtle, ambitious,
and ingratiating brothers. This youth, Kao, thinking that the occasion
certainly called for a momentary relaxation of his usual diffidence,
now approached his father modestly, and begged that he also might be
included to some trivial degree in his bounty.

This reasonable petition involved Wei in an embarrassing perplexity.
Although he had forgotten Kao completely in the division, he had now
definitely concluded the arrangement; nor, to his failing powers, did it
appear possible to make a just allotment on any other lines. “How can a
person profitably cut up an orange-tree, a boat, an inlaid couch, or
a house?” he demanded. “Who can divide a flowing river, or what but
unending strife can arise from regarding an open field in anything
but its entirety? Assuredly six cohesive objects cannot be apportioned
between four persons.” Yet he could not evade the justice of Kao’s
implied rebuke, so drawing to his side a jade cabinet he opened it, and
from among the contents he selected an ebony staff, a paper umbrella,
and a fan inscribed with a mystical sentence. These three objects he
placed in Kao’s hands, and with his last breath signified that he should
use them discreetly as the necessity arose.

When the funeral ceremonies were over, Chu, Shan, and Hing came
together, and soon moulded their covetous thoughts into an agreed
conspiracy. “Of what avail would be a boat or a river if this person
sacrificed the nets and appliances by which the fish are ensnared?”
 asked Shan. “How little profit would lie in an orange-tree and a field
without cattle and the implements of husbandry!” cried Hing. “One cannot
occupy a gold couch in an empty house both by day and night,” remarked
Chu stubbornly. “How inadequate, therefore, would such a provision be
for three.”

When Kao understood that his three brothers had resolved to act in this
outrageous manner he did not hesitate to reproach them; but not being
able to contend against him honourably, they met him with ridicule.
“Do not attempt to rule us with your wooden staff,” they cried
contemptuously. “Sacrifice IT if your inside is really sincere. And,
in the meanwhile, go and sit under your paper umbrella and wield
your inscribed fan, while we attend to our couch, our boat, and our
orange-tree.”

“Truly,” thought Kao to himself when they had departed, “their words
were irrationally offensive, but among them there may stand out a
pointed edge. Our magnanimous father is now bereft of both comforts
and necessities, and although an ebony rod is certainly not much in the
circumstances, if this person is really humanely-intentioned he will not
withhold it.” With this charitable design Kao build a fire before the
couch (being desirous, out of his forgiving nature, to associate his
eldest brother in the offering), and without hesitation sacrificed the
most substantial of his three possessions.

It here becomes necessary to explain that in addition to being an expert
astrologer, Wei was a far-seeing magician. The rod of unimpressionable
solidity was in reality a charm against decay, and its hidden virtues
being thus destroyed, a contrary state of things naturally arose, so
that the next morning it was found that during the night the gold couch
had crumbled away into a worthless dust.

Even this manifestation did not move the three brothers, although the
geniality of Shan and Hing’s countenances froze somewhat towards Chu.
Nevertheless Chu still possessed a house, and by pointing out that they
could live as luxuriantly as before on the resources of the river and
the field and the tree, he succeeded in maintaining his position among
them.

After seven days Kao reflected again. “This avaricious person still has
two objects, both of which he owes to his revered father’s imperishable
influence,” he admitted conscience-stricken, “while the being in
question has only one.” Without delay he took the paper umbrella and
ceremoniously burned it, scattering the ashes this time upon Shan’s
river. Like the rod the umbrella also possessed secret virtues, its
particular excellence being a curse against clouds, wind demons,
thunderbolts and the like, so that during the night a great storm raged,
and by the morning Shan’s boat had been washed away.

This new calamity found the three brothers more obstinately perverse
than ever. It cannot be denied that Hing would have withdrawn from the
guilty confederacy, but they were as two to one, and prevailed, pointing
out that the house still afforded shelter, the river yielded some of the
simpler and inferior fish which could be captured from the banks, and
the fruitfulness of the orange-tree was undiminished.

At the end of seven more days Kao became afflicted with doubt. “There is
no such thing as a fixed proportion or a set reckoning between a dutiful
son and an embarrassed sire,” he confessed penitently. “How incredibly
profane has been this person’s behaviour in not seeing the obligation in
its unswerving necessity before.” With this scrupulous resolve Kao took
his last possession, and carrying it into the field he consumed it
with fire beneath Hing’s orange-tree. The fan, in turn, also had hidden
properties, its written sentence being a spell against drought, hot
winds, and the demons which suck the nourishment from all crops. In
consequence of the act these forces were called into action, and before
another day Hing’s tree had withered away.

It is said with reason, “During the earthquake men speak the truth.” At
this last disaster the impious fortitude of the three brothers suddenly
gave way, and cheerfully admitting their mistake, each committed
suicide, Chu disembowelling himself among the ashes of his couch, Shan
sinking beneath the waters of his river, and Hing hanging by a rope
among the branches of his own effete orange-tree.

When they had thus fittingly atoned for their faults the imprecation was
lifted from off their possessions. The couch was restored by magic
art to its former condition, the boat was returned by a justice-loving
person into whose hands it had fallen lower down the river, and
the orange-tree put out new branches. Kao therefore passed into an
undiminished inheritance. He married three wives, to commemorate the
number of his brothers, and had three sons, whom he called Chu, Shan,
and Hing, for a like purpose. These three all attained to high office in
the State, and by their enlightened morals succeeded in wiping all the
discreditable references to others bearing the same names from off the
domestic tablets.

From this story it will be seen that by acting virtuously, yet with an
observing discretion, on all occasions, it is generally possible not
only to rise to an assured position, but at the same time unsuspectedly
to involve those who stand in our way in a just destruction.




LETTER XIII


 Concerning a state of necessity; the arisings engendered
 thereby, and the turned-away face of those ruling the
 literary quarter of the city towards one possessing a style.
 This foreign manner of feigning representations, and
 concerning my dignified portrayal of two.


VENERATED SIRE,--It is now more than three thousand years ago that the
sublime moralist Tcheng How, on being condemned by a resentful official
to a lengthy imprisonment in a very inadequate oil jar, imperturbably
replied, “As the snail fits his impliant shell, so can the wise adapt
themselves to any necessity,” and at once coiled himself up in the
restricted space with unsuspected agility. In times of adversity this
incomparable reply has often shone as a steadfast lantern before my
feet, but recently it struck my senses with a heavier force, for
upon presenting myself on the last occasion at the place of exchange
frequented by those who hitherto have carried out your spoken promise
with obliging exactitude, and at certain stated intervals freely granted
to this person a sufficiency of pieces of gold, merely requiring
in return an inscribed and signet-bearing record of the fact, I was
received with no diminution of sympathetic urbanity, indeed, but with
hands quite devoid of outstretched fulness.

In a small inner chamber, to which I was led upon uttering courteous
protests, one of solitary authority explained how the deficiency had
arisen, but owing to the skill with which he entwined the most intricate
terms in unbroken fluency, the only impression left upon my superficial
mind was, that the person before me was imputing the scheme for
my despoilment less to any mercenary instinct on the part of his
confederates, than to a want of timely precision maintained by one who
seemed to bear an agreeable-sounding name somewhat similar to your own,
and who, from the difficulty of reaching his immediate ear, might be
regarded as dwelling in a distant land. Encouraged by this conciliatory
profession (and seeing no likelihood of gaining my end otherwise), I
thereupon declared my willingness that the difference lying between us
should be submitted to the pronouncement of dispassionate omens, either
passing birds, flat and round sticks, the seeds of two oranges, wood and
fire, water poured out upon the ground or any equally reliable sign as
he himself might decide. However, in spite of his honourable assurances,
he was doubtless more deeply implicated in the adventure than he
would admit, for at this scrupulous proposal the benignant mask of his
expression receded abruptly, and, striking a hidden bell, he waved his
hands and stood up to signify that further justice was denied me.

In this manner a state of destitution calling for the fullest acceptance
of Tcheng How’s impassive philosophy was created, nor had many
hours faded before the first insidious temptation to depart from his
uncompromising acquiescence presented itself.

At that time there was no one in whom I reposed a larger-sized piece
of confidence (in no way involving sums of money,) than one officially
styled William Beveledge Greyson, although, profiting by our own custom,
it is unusual for those really intimate with his society to address him
fully, unless the occasion should be one of marked ceremony. Forming a
resolution, I now approached this obliging person, and revealing to him
the cause of the emergency, I prayed that he would advise me, as one
abandoned on a strange Island, by what handicraft or exercise of skill I
might the readiest secure for the time a frugal competence.

“Why, look here, aged man,” at once replied the lavish William Greyson,
“don’t worry yourself about that. I can easily let you have a few pounds
to tide you over. You will probably hear from the bank in the course
of a few days or weeks, and it’s hardly worth while doing anything
eccentric in the meantime.”

At this delicately-worded proposal I was about to shake hands with
myself in agreement, when the memory of Tcheng How’s resolute submission
again possessed me, and seeing that this would be an unworthy betrayal
of destiny I turned aside the action, and replying evasively that the
world was too small to hold himself and another equally magnanimous, I
again sought his advice.

“Now what silly upside-down idea is it that you’ve got into that Chinese
puzzle you call your head, Kong?” he replied; for this same William was
one who habitually gilded unpalatable truths into the semblance of
a flattering jest. “Whenever you turn off what you are saying into
a willow-pattern compliment and bow seventeen times like an animated
mandarin, I know that you are keeping something back. Be a man and
a brother, and out with it,” and he struck me heavily upon the left
shoulder, which among the barbarians is a proof of cordiality to be
esteemed much above the mere wagging of each other’s hands.

“In the matter of guidance,” I replied, “this person is ready to sit
unreservedly on your well-polished feet. But touching the borrowing of
money, obligations to restore with an added sum after a certain period,
initial-bearing papers of doubtful import, and the like, I have read too
deeply the pointed records of your own printed sheets not to prefer
an existence devoted to the scraping together of dust at the street
corners, rather than a momentary affluence which in the end would betray
me into the tiger-like voracity of a native money-lender.”

“Well, you do me proud, Kong,” said William Beveledge, after regarding
me fixedly for a moment. “If I didn’t remember that you are a
flat-faced, slant-eyed, top-side-under, pig-tailed old heathen, I should
be really annoyed at your unwarrantable personalities. Do you take ME
for what you call a ‘native money-lender’?”

“The pronouncements of destiny are written in iron,” I replied
inoffensively, “and it is as truly said that one fated to end his life
in a cave cannot live for ever on the top of a pagoda. Undoubtedly as
one born and residing here you are native, and as inexorably it succeeds
that if you lend me pieces of gold you become a money-lender. Therefore,
though honourably inspired at the first, you would equally be drawn into
the entanglement of circumstance, and the unevadible end must inevitably
be that against which your printed papers consistently warn one.”

“And what is that?” asked Beveledge Greyson, still regarding me closely,
as though I were a creature of another part.

“At first,” I replied, “there would be an alluring snare of graceful
words, tea, and the consuming of paper-rolled herbs, and the matter
would be lightly spoken of as capable of an easy adjustment; which,
indeed, it cannot be denied, is how the detail stands at present. The
next position would be that this person, finding himself unable to
gather together the equivalent of return within the stated time, would
greet you with a very supple neck and pray for a further extension,
which would be permitted on the understanding that in the event of
failure his garments and personal charms should be held in bondage. To
escape so humiliating a necessity, as the time drew near I would address
myself to another, one calling himself William, perchance, and dwelling
in a northern province, to whom I would be compelled to assign my
peach-orchard at Yuen-ping. Then by varying degrees of infamy I would
in turn be driven to visit a certain Bevel of the Middle Lands, a person
Edge carrying on his insatiable traffic on the southern coast, one Grey
elsewhere, and a Mr. Son, of the west, who might make an honourable
profession of lending money without any security whatever, but who in
the end would possess himself of my ancestral tablets, wives, and inlaid
coffin, and probably also obtain a lien upon my services and prosperity
in the Upper Air. Then, when I had parted from all comfort in this
life, and every hope of affluence in the Beyond, it would presently
be disclosed that all these were in reality as one person who had
unceasingly plotted to my destruction, and William Beveledge Greyson
would stand revealed in the guise of a malevolent vampire. Truly that
development has at this moment an appearance of unreality, and worthy
even of pooh-pooh, but thus is the warning spread by your own printed
papers and the records of your Halls of Justice, and it would be an
unseemly presumption for one of my immature experience to ignore the
outstretched and warning finger of authority.”

“Well, Kong,” he said at length, after considering my words attentively,
“I always thought that your mental outlook was a hash of Black Art,
paper lanterns, blank verse, twilight, and delirium tremens, but hang me
if you aren’t sound on finance, and I only wish that you’d get some of
my friends to look at the matter of borrowing in your own reasonable,
broad-minded light. The question is, what next?”

I replied that I leaned heavily against his sagacious insight, adding,
however, that even among a nation of barbarians one who could repeat
the three hundred and eleven poems comprising the Book of Odes from
beginning to end, and claim the degree “Assured Genius” would ever be
certain of a place.

“Yes,” replied William Greyson,--“in the workhouse. Put your degree in
your inside pocket, Kong, and don’t mention it. You’ll have far more
chance as a distressed mariner. The casual wards are full of B.A.’s,
but the navy can’t get enough A.B.’s at any price. What do you say to
an organ, by the way? Mysterious musicians generally go down well, and
I dare say there’s room for a change from veiled ladies, persecuted
captains and indigent earls. You ought to make a sensation.”

“Is it in the nature of melodious sounds upon winding a handle?” I
asked, not at the moment grasping with certainty to what organ he
referred.

“Well, some call them that,” he admitted, “others don’t. I suppose, now,
you wouldn’t care to walk to Brighton with your feet tied together,
or your hair in curl papers, and then get on at a music hall? Or would
there be any chance of your Legation kidnapping you if it was properly
worked? ‘Kong Ho, the great Chinese Reformer, tells the Story of his
Life,’--there ought to be money in it. Are you a reformer or the leader
of a secret society, Kong?”

“On the contrary,” I replied, “we of our Line have ever been unflinching
in our loyalty to the dynasty of Tsing.”

“You ought to have known better, then. It’s a poor business being that
in your country nowadays. Pity there are no bye-elections on the African
Labour Question, or you’d be snapped up for a procession.”

To this I replied that although the idea of moving in a processional
triumph would readily ensnare the minds of the light and fantastic, I
should prefer some more literary occupation, submissively adding that in
such a case I would not stiffen my joints against the most menial lot,
even that of blending my voice in a laudatory chorus, or of carrying
official pronouncements about the walls of the city, for it is said with
justice, “The starving man does not peel his melon, nor do the parched
first wipe round the edges of the proffered cup.”

“If you’ve set your mind on something literary,” said Beveledge
confidently, “you have every chance of finishing up in a chorus or
carrying printed placards about the streets, certainly. When it comes
to that, look me up in Eastcheap.” With this encouraging assurance of
my ultimate success he left me, and rejoicing that I had not fallen into
the snare of opposing a written destiny, I sought the literary quarters
of the city.

When this person has been able to write of any custom or facet of
existence here in a strain of conscientious esteem, he has not hesitated
to dip his brush deeply into the inkpot. Reverting backwards, this
barbarian enactment of not permitting those who from any cause have
decided upon spending the night in a philosophical abstraction to repose
upon the public seats about the swards and open spaces is not conceived
in a mood of affable toleration. Nevertheless there are deserted places
beyond the furthest limits of the city where a more amiable full-face
is shown. On the eleventh day of this one’s determination to sustain
himself by the exercise of his literary style, he was journeying about
sunset towards one of these spots, subduing the grosser instincts of
mankind by reviewing the wisdom of the sublime Lao Ch’un, who decided
that heat and cold, pain and fatigue, and mental distress, have no real
existence, and are therefore amenable to logical disproof, while the
cravings of hunger and thirst are merely the superfluous attributes of
a former and lower state of existence, when a passer-by, who for some
distance had been alternately advancing before and remaining behind,
matched his footsteps into mine.

“Whichee way walk-go, John, eh?” said this unfortunate being, who
appeared to be suffering from a laborious deformity of speech. “Allee
samee load me. Chin-chin.”

Filled with compassion for one who evidently found himself alone in a
strange land, in the absence of his more highly-accomplished companion,
unable to indicate his wants and requirements to those about him, I
regretfully admitted that I had not chanced to encounter that John
whose wandering footsteps he sought; and to indicate, by not leaving him
abruptly, that I maintained a sympathetic concern over his welfare, I
pointed out to him the exceptional brilliance of the approaching night,
adding that I myself was then directing a course towards a certain
spacious Heath, a few li distant in the north.

“Sing-dance tomollow, then?” he said, with a condensed air of general
disappointment. “Chop-chop in a pay look-see show on Ham--Hamstl--oh
damme! on ‘Ampstead ‘Eath? Booked up, eh, John?”

Gradually convinced that it was becoming necessary to readjust the
significance of the incident, I replied that I had no intention of
partaking of chops or food of any variety in an erected tent, but merely
of passing the night in an intellectual seclusion.

“Oh,” said the one who was walking by my side, regarding my garments
with engaging attention, and at the same time appearing to regain an
unruffled speech as though the other had been an assumed device, “I
understand--the Blue Sky Hotel. Well, I’ve stayed there once or twice
myself. A bit down on your uppers, eh?”

“Assuredly this person may perchance lay his upper parts down for a
short space of time,” I admitted, when I had traced out the symbolism of
the words. “As it is humanely written in The Books, ‘Sleep and suicide
are the free refuges equally of the innocent and the guilty.’”

“Oh, come now, don’t,” exclaimed the energetic person, striking himself
together by means of his two hands. “It’s sinful to talk about suicide
the day before bank holiday. Why, my only Somali warrior has vamoosed
with his full make-up, and the Magnetic Girl too, and I never thought of
suicide--only whether to turn my old woman into a Veiled Beauty of the
Harem or a Hairy Lama from Tibet.”

Not absolutely grasping the emergency, yet in a spirit of inoffensive
cordiality I remarked that the alternative was insufferably perplexing,
while he continued.

“Then I spotted you, and in a flash I got an idea that ought to take and
turn out really great if you’ll come in. Now follow this: Missionary’s
tent in the wilds of Pekin. Domestic interior by lamp-light. Missionary
(me) reading evening paper; missionary’s wife (the missus) making tea,
and between times singing to keep the small pet goat quiet (small goat,
a pillow, horsecloth, and pocket-handkerchief). Breaks down singing,
sobs, and says she feels a strange all-over presentiment. Missionary
admits being a bit fluffed himself, and lets out about a notice signed
in blood that he’s seen in the city.”

“Carried upon a pole?” this person demanded, feeling that something of a
literary nature might yet be wrested into the incident.

“On a flagstaff if you like,” conceded the other one magnanimously. “A
notice to the effect that it is the duty of every jack mother’s son of
them to douse the foreign devils, man, woman, and child, and especially
the talk-book pass-hat-round men. Also that he has had several
brick-ends heaved at him on his way back. Then stops suddenly, hits
his upper crust, and says that it’s like his blamed fat-headedness
to frighten her; while she clutches at herself three times and faints
away.”

“Amid the voluminous burning of blue lights?” suggested this person
resourcefully.

“By rights there should be,” admitted the one who was devising the
representation; “but it will hardly run to it. Anyway, it costs nothing
to turn the lamp down--saves a bit in fact, and gives an effect. Then
outside, in the distance at first you understand, you begin to work up
the sound of the advancing mob--rattles, shouts, tum-tums, groans, tin
plates and all that one mortal man can do with hands, feet and mouth.”

“With the interspersal of an occasional cracker and the stirring notes
produced by striking a hollow wooden fish repeatedly?” I cried; for let
it be confessed that amid the portrayal of the scene my imagination had
taken an allotted part.

“If you like to provide them, and don’t set the bally show on fire,” he
replied. “Anyhow, these two aren’t supposed to notice anything even when
the row gets louder. Then it drops and you are heard outside talking in
whispers to the others--words of command and telling them to keep back
half-a-mo, and so on. See?”

“Doubtless introducing a spoken charm and repeating the words of an
incantation against omens, treachery, and other matters.”

“Next a flap of the tent down on the floor is raised, and you
reconnoitre, looking your very worst and holding a knife between your
teeth and another in each hand. Wave a hand to your followers to keep
back--or come on: it makes no difference. Then you crawl in on your
stomach, give a terrific howl, and stab me in the back. That rolls
me under the curtain, and so lets me out. The missus ups with the
wood-chopper and stands before the cradle, while you yell and dance
round with the knives. That ought to be made ‘the moment’ of the whole
piece. The great thing is to make enough noise. If you can yell louder
than the talking-machine outfit on the next pitch we ought to turn money
away. While you are at it I start a fresh row outside--shouts, cheers,
groans, words of command and a paper bag or two. Seeing that the game
is up you make a rush at the old woman; she downs you with the chopper,
turns the lamp up full, shakes out a Union Jack over the sleeping
infant, and finally stands in her finest attitude with one hand pointing
impressively upwards and the other contemptuously downwards just as Rule
Britannia is played on the cornet outside and I appear at the door in a
general’s full uniform and let down the curtain.”

For acting in the manner designated--as touching the noises both inside
and out, the set dance with upraised knives, the casting to earth of
himself, and being myself in turn vanquished by the aged female, with
an added compact that from time to time I should be led by a chain
and shown to the people from a raised platform--we agreed upon a daily
reward of two pieces of silver, an adequacy of food, and a certain
ambiguously-referred-to share of the gain. It need not be denied that
with so favourable an opportunity of introducing passages from the
Classics a much less sum would have been accepted, but having obtained
this without a struggle, the one now recounting the facts raised the
opportune suggestion of an inscribed placard, in order to fulfil the
portent foreshadowed by William Greyson.

“Oh, we’ll star you, never fear,” assented the accommodating personage,
and having by this time reached that spot upon the Heath where his
Domestic Altar had been raised, we entered.

“All the most distinguished actors in this country take another
name,” he said reflectively, when he had drawn forth a parchment of
praiseworthy dimensions and ink of three colours, “and though I have
nothing to say against Kong Ho Tsin Cheng Quank Paik T’chun Li Yuen
Nung for quiet unostentatious dignity, it doesn’t have just the grip
and shudder that we want. Now how does ‘Fang’ strike you?” and upon my
courteous acquiescence that this indeed united within it those qualities
which he required, he traced its characters in red ink upon a lavish
scale.

“‘Fang Hung Sin’ about fits the idea of snap and bloodthirstiness, I
should say,” he continued, and using the brush and all the colours
with an expert proficiency which would infallibly gain him an early
recognition at any of our competitive examinations, he presently laid
before me the following gracefully-composed notice, which was suspended
from a conspicuous pole about the door of the tent on the following day.

 FANG HUNG SIN
 The Captured Boxer Chieftain.

 Under a strong guard, and by arrangement with the British and
 Chinese authorities concerned,

 Fang Hung Sin

 Will positively re-enact the GORY SCENES of CARNAGE in which
 he took a LEADING and SANGUINARY PART during the LATE RISING.

 ALONE IN PEKIN
 Or, What a Woman can do.

 PANEL I. PEACE: The Missionary’s Tent by Night--All’s Well--
 The Dread Warning--“I am by your side, Beloved.”

 PANEL II. ALARM: The Signal--The Spy--The Mob Outside--
 Treachery--“Save Yourself, my Darling”--“And Leave
 You? Never!”

 PANEL III. REVENGE: The Attack--The Blow Falls--Who Can Save
 Her Now?--“Back, Renegade Viper!”--The English Guns
 --“Rule Britannia!”

 FANG HUNG SIN, The Desperado.
 There is only one FANG, and he must be seen.
 FANG! FANG!! FANG!!!

I will not upon this occasion, esteemed one, delay myself with an
account of this barbarian Festival of Lanterns; or, as their language
would convey it, Feast of Cocoa-nuts, beyond admitting that with
the possible exception of an important provincial capital during the
triennial examinations I doubt whether our own unapproachable Empire
could show a more impressively-extended gathering, either in the diverse
and ornamental efflorescence of head garb, in the affectionate display
openly lavished by persons of one sex towards those of the other, or
even one more successful in our own pre-eminent art of producing the
multitudinous harmony of conflicting sounds.

At the appointed hour this person submitted himself to be heavily
shackled, and being led out before the assembled crowd, endeavoured by
a smiling benignity of manner and by reassuring signs of welcome, to
produce a favourable impression upon their sympathies and to allure
them within. This pacific face was undoubtedly successful, however
offensively the ill-conditioned one who stood by was inspired to express
himself behind his teeth, for the space of the tent was very quickly
occupied and the actions of simulation were to begin.

Without doubt it might have been better if this person had first made
himself more fully acquainted with the barbarian manner of acting. The
fact that this imagined play, which even in one of our inferior theatres
would have filled the time pleasantly for two or three months, was to
be compressed into the narrow limits of seven minutes and a half, should
reasonably have warned him that amid the ensuing rapidity of word and
action, most of the leisurely courtesies and all the subtle range of
concealed emotion which embellish our own wood pavement must be ignored.
But it is well and suggestively written, “The person who deliberates
sufficiently before taking every step will spend his life standing
upon one leg.” In the past this one had not found himself to be grossly
inadequate on any arising emergency, and he now drew aside the hanging
drapery and prepared to carry out a preconcerted part with intrepid
self-reliance.

It has already been expressed, that the reason and incentive urging me
to a ready agreement lay in the opportunities by which suitable passages
from the high Classics could be discreetly woven into the fabric of the
plot, and the occupation thereby permeated with an honourable literary
flavour. In accordance with this resolve I blended together many
imperishable sayings of the wisest philosophers to present the cries and
turmoil of the approaching mob, but it was not until I protruded my
head beneath the hanging canopy in the guise of one observing that an
opportunity arose of a really well-sustained effort. In this position I
recited Yung Ki’s stimulating address to his troops when in sight of an
overwhelming foe, and, in spite of the continually back-thrust foot
of the undiscriminating one before me, I successfully accomplished the
seventy-five lines of the poem without a stumble. Then entering fully,
with many deprecatory bows and expressions of self-abasement at taking
part in so seemingly detestable an action, I treacherously, yet with
inoffensive tact, struck the one wearing an all-round collar delicately
upon the back. Not recognising the movement, or being in some other way
obtuse, the person in question instead of sinking to the ground turned
hastily to me in the form of an inquiry, leaving me no other reasonable
course than to display the knife openly to him, and to assure him that
the fatal blow had already been inflicted. Undoubtedly his immoderate
retorts were inept at such a moment, nor was his ensuing strategy of
turning completely round three times, striking himself about the head
and body, and uttering ceremonious curses before he fell devoid of
life--as though the earlier remarks had been part of the ordained
scheme--to any degree convincing, and the cries of disapproval from the
onlookers proved that they also regarded this one as the victim of an
unworthy rebuke.

“Not if the benches were filled at half a guinea a head would I take
on another performance like that,” exclaimed the one with whom I was
associated, when it was over. “Besides the dead loss of lasting three
quarters of an hour it’s tempting providence when the seats are movable.
I suppose it isn’t your fault, Kong, you poor creature, but you haven’t
got no glare and glitter. There’s only one thing for it: you must be the
Rev. Mr. Walker and I’ll take Fang.” He then robed himself in my attire,
guided me among the intricacies of the all-round collar and outer
garments in exchange, hung a slender rope about his back, and after
completing the artifice by a skilful device of massing coloured inks
upon our faces, he commanded me to lead him out by a chain and observe
intelligently how a captive Boxer chief should disport himself.

No sooner had we reached the platform than the one whom I controlled
leapt high into the air, dragged me to the edge of the erection, showed
his teeth towards the assembly and waved his arms menacingly at them;
then turning upon this person, he inflamed his face with passion,
rattled his chain furiously, and uttered such vengeance-laden cries
that, unable to subdue the emotion of fear, I abandoned all pretence,
and dropping the chain, fled to the furthest recess of the tent,
followed by the still threatening Fang.

There is an expression among us, “Cheng-hu was too considerate: he tried
to drive nails with a cucumber.” Cheng-hu would certainly have quickly
found the necessity of a weapon of three-times hardened steel if he had
lived among these barbarians, who are insensible to the higher forms of
politeness, in addition to acting in a contrary and illogical manner
on all occasions. Instead of being repelled and discouraged by Fang’s
outrageous behaviour, they clamoured to be admitted into the tent more
vehemently than before, and so successfully established the venture that
the one to whom I must now allude throughout as Fang signified to me his
covetous intention of reducing the performance by a further two and a
half minutes in order to reap an added profit and to garner all his rice
before the Hoang Ho rose.

As for myself, revered, it would be immature to hold the gauze screen of
prevarication between your all-discerning mind and my own trepidation.
From the moment when I first saw the expression of utterly depraved
malignity and deep-seared hate which he had cunningly engraved upon his
face by means of the coloured inks, I was far from being comfortably
settled within myself. Even the society of the not inelegant being of
the inner chamber, whom it was now my part to console with alluring
words and movements, could not for some time retain my face from a
back-way instinct at every sound; but when the detail was reached that
she sank into my grasp bereft of all energy, and for the first time I
was just succeeding in forgetting the unpropitious surroundings, the
one Fang, who had entered with unseemly stealth, suddenly hurled his
soul-freezing battle-cry upon my ear and leapt forward with uplifted
knife. Perceiving the action from an angle of my eye even as he
propelled himself through the air, I could not restrain an ignoble wail
of despair, and not scrupling to forsake the maiden, I would have taken
refuge beneath a couch had he not seized my outer robe and hurled me
to the ground. From this point to the close of the entertainment
the vigorous person in question did not cease from raising cries and
challenges in an unfaltering and many-fathomed stream, while at the same
time he continued to spring from one extremity of the stage to the other
surrounded by every external attribute of an insatiable tiger-like rage.
It is circumstantially related that the one near at hand, who has been
referred to as possessing a voiced machine, became demented, and bearing
the contrivance to a certain tent erected by the charitable, entreated
them to remove the impediment from its speech so that it might be heard
again and his livelihood restored. When the action of brandishing
a profusion of knives before the lesser one’s eyes was reached, so
nerve-shattering was the impression which Fang created that the back of
the tent had to be removed in order to let out those who no longer had
possession of themselves, and to let in those--to a ten-fold
degree--who strove for admission on the rumour spreading that something
exceptionally repellent was progressing within.

With what attenuated organs of repose this person would have reached
the end of so strenuous an occupation had he been compelled to twelve
enactments each hour throughout the gong-strokes of the day without any
literary relief, it is not enticing to dwell upon. This evil was averted
by a timely intervention, for upon proceeding to the outer air for the
third time I at once perceived among the foremost throng the engaging
full-face of William Beveledge Greyson. This really painstaking
individual had learned, as he afterwards explained, that the chiefs of
exchange (those who in the first case had opposed me resolutely,) had
received a written omen, and now in contrition were expressing their
willingness to hold out a full restitution. With this assurance he
had set forth in an unremitting search, and guided by street-watchers,
removers of superfluous earth, families propelling themselves forward
upon one foot, astrologers, two-wheeled charioteers, and others who move
early and secretly by night, he had traced my description to this same
Heath. Here he had been attracted by the displayed placard (remembering
my honourable boast), and approaching nearer, he had plainly recognised
my voice within. But in spite of this the successful disentanglement was
by no means yet accomplished.

Not expecting so involved a reversal of things, and being short-eyed by
nature, William Greyson did not wait for a fuller assurance than to
be satisfied that the one before him wore my robes and conformed in a
general outline, before he addressed him.

“Kong Ho,” he said pleasantly, “what the Chief Evil Spirit are you doing
up there?” adding persuasively, “Come down, there’s a good fellow. I
have something important to tell you.”

Thus appealed to, the one Fang hesitated in doubt, seeing on the one
hand a certain loss of face if he declined the conversation, and on the
other hand having no clear perception of what was required from him.
Therefore he entered upon a course of evasion and somewhat incapably
replied, “Chow Chop Wei Hai Wei Lung Tung Togo Kuroki Jim Jam Beri
Beri.”

“Don’t act the horned sheep,” said Beveledge, who was both resolute and
one easily set into violent motion by an opposing stream. “Come down,
or I’ll come up and fetch you.” And not being satisfied with Fang’s
ill-advised attempt to express himself equivocally, those around took up
the apt similitude of a self-opinionated animal, and began to suggest a
comparison to other creatures no less degraded.

“Rats yourselves!” exclaimed the easily-inflamed person at my side,
losing the inefficient cords of his prudence beneath the sting. “Who’s
a rabbit? For two guinea-pigs I’d mow all the grass between here and
the Spaniards with your own left ears,” and not permitting me sufficient
preparation to withhold the chain more firmly, he abruptly cast himself
down among them, amid a scene of the most untamed confusion.

“Oh, affectionately-disposed brethren,” I exclaimed, moving forward and
raising my hand in refined disapproval, “the sublime Confucius, in the
twenty-third chapter of the book called ‘The Great Learning,’ warns us
against--” but before I could formulate the allusion Beveledge
Greyson, who at the sound of my conciliatory words had gazed first in
astonishment and then in a self-convulsed position, drew himself up to
my side, and taking a firm grasp upon the all-round collar, projected me
without a pause through the tent, and only halting for a moment to point
significantly back to the varied and animated scene behind, where, amid
a very profuse display of contending passions, the erected stage was
already being dragged to the ground, and a band of the official watch
was in the act of converging from every side, he led me through more
deserted paths to the scene of a final extrication.

With a well-gratified sense of having held an unswerving course along
the convoluted outline of Destiny’s decree, to whatever tending.

KONG HO.




LETTER XIV


 Concerning a pressing invitation from an ever benevolently-
 disposed father to a prosaic but dutifully-inclined son. The
 recording of certain matters of no particular moment.
 Concerning that ultimate end which is symbolic of the
 inexorable wheels of a larger Destiny.


VENERATED SIRE,--It is not for the earthworm to say when and in what
exact position the iron-shod boot shall descend, and this person, being
an even inferior creature for the purpose of the comparison, bows an
acquiescent neck to your very explicit command that he shall return to
Yuen-ping without delay. He cannot put away from his mind a clinging
suspicion that this arising is the result of some imperfection in
his deplorable style of correspondence, whereby you have formed an
impression quite opposed to that which it had been the intention to
convey, and that, perchance, you even have a secret doubt whether upon
some specified occasion he may not have conducted the enterprise to an
ignoble, or at least not markedly successful, end. However, the saying
runs, “The stone-cutter always has the last word,” and you equally, by
intimating with your usual unanswerable and clear-sighted gift of
logic that no further allowance of taels will be sent for this one’s
dispersal, diplomatically impose upon an ever-yearning son the most
feverish anxiety once more to behold your large and open-handed face.

Standing thus poised, as it may be said, for a returning flight across
the elements of separation, it is not inopportune for this person to let
himself dwell gracefully upon those lighter points of recollection which
have engraved themselves from time to time upon his mind without leading
to any more substantial adventure worthy to record. Many of the things
which seemed strange and incomprehensible when he first came among
this powerful though admittedly barbarian people, are now revealed at
a proper angle; others, to which he formerly imagined he had found the
disclosing key, are, on the other hand, plunged into a distorting haze;
while between these lie a multitude of details in every possible stage
of disentanglement and doubt. As a final and painstaking pronouncement,
this person has no hesitation in declaring that this country is
not--as practically all our former travellers have declared--completely
down-side-up as compared with our own manners and customs, but at the
same time it is very materially sideways.

Thus, instead of white, black robes are the indication of mourning; but
as, for the generality, the same colour is also used for occasions of
commerce, ceremony, religion, and the ordinary affairs of life, the
matter remains exactly as it was before. Yet with obtuse inconsistency
the garments usually white--in which a change would be really
noticeable--remain white throughout the most poignant grief. How much
more markedly expressed would be the symbolism if during such a period
they wore white outer robes and black body garments. Nevertheless it
cannot be said that they are unmindful of the emblematic influence of
colour, for, unlike the reasonable conviction that red is red and blue
is blue, which has satisfied our great nation from the days of the
legendary Shun, these pale-eyed foreigners have diverged into countless
trifling imaginings, so that when the one who is now expressing his
contempt for the development required a robe of a certain hue, he had to
bend his mouth, before he could be exactly understood, to the degrading
necessity of asking for “Drowned-rat brown,” “Sunstroke magenta,”
 “Billingsgate purple,” “London milk azure,” “Settling-day green,” or the
like. In the other signs of mourning they do not come within measurable
distance of our pure and uncomfortable standard. “If you are really
sincere in your regret for the one who has Passed Beyond, why do you not
sit upon the floor for seven days and nights, take up all food with your
fingers, and allow your nails to grow untrimmed for three years?” was
a question which I at first instinctively put to lesser ones in their
affliction. In every case save one I received answers of evasive
purport, and even the one stated reason, “Because although I am a poor
widder I ain’t a pig,” I deemed shallow.

I have already dipped a revealing brush into the subject of names.
Were the practice of applying names in a wrong and illogical sequence
maintained throughout it might indeed raise a dignified smile, but
it would not appear contemptible; but what can be urged when upon an
occasion one name appears first, upon another occasion last? A dignity
is conferred in old age, and it is placed before the family designation
borne by an honoured father and a direct line of seventeen revered
ancestors. Another title is bestowed, and eats up the former like a
revengeful dragon. New distinctions follow, some at one end, others at
another, until a very successful person may be suitably compared to
the ringed oleander snake, which has the power of growing equally
from either the head or the tail. To express the matter by a definite
allusion, how much more graceful and orchideous, even in a condensed
fashion, would appear the designation of this selected one, if instead
of the usual form of the country it was habitually set forth in the
following logical and thoroughly Chinese style:--Chamberlain Joseph,
Master, Mr., Thrice Wearer of the Robes and Golden Collar, One of the
Just Peacemakers, Esquire, Member of the House of Law-givers, Leader
in the Council of Commerce, Presider over the Tables of Provincial
Government, Uprightly Honourable Secretary of the Outlying Parts.

Among the notes which at various times I have inscribed in a book
for future guidance I find it written on an early page, “They do not
hesitate to express their fathers’ names openly,” but to this assertion
there stands a warning sign which was added after the following
incident. “Is it true, Mr. Kong,” asked a lesser one, who is spoken of
as vastly rich but discontented with her previous lot, of this person
upon an occasion, “is it really true that your countrymen to not
consider it right to speak of their fathers’ names, even in this
enlightened age?” To this I replied that the matter was as she had
eloquently expressed it, and, encouraged by her amiable condescension,
I asked after the memory of her paternal grandsire, whose name I had
frequently heard whispered in connection with her own. To my inelegant
confusion she regarded me for a period as though I had the virtue of
having become transparent, and then passed on in a most overwhelming
excess of disconcertingly-arranged silence.

“You’ve done it now, Kong,” said one who stood by (or, as we would
express the same thought, “You have succeeded in accomplishing the
undesirable”); “don’t you know that the old man was in the tripe and
trotter line?”

“To no degree,” I replied truly. “Yet,” I continued, matching his idiom
with another equally facile, “wherein was this person’s screw loose? Are
they not openly referred to--those of the Line of Tripe and Trotter--by
their descendants?”

“Not in most cases,” he said, with a concentration that indicated
a lurking sting among his words. “Generally speaking, they aren’t
mentioned or taken into any account whatever. While they are alive they
are kept in the background and invited to treat themselves to the Tower
when nice people are expected; when dead they are fastened up in the
family back cupboard by a score of ten-inch nails and three-trick Yale
locks, so to speak. And in the meantime all the splash is being made on
their muddy oof. See?”

I nodded agreeably, though, had the opportunity been more favourable, I
would have made the feint to learn somewhat more of this secret practice
of burying in the enclosed space beneath the stairs. Thus is it set
forth why, after the statement, “They do not hesitate to express their
fathers’ names openly,” it is further written, “Walk slowly! Engrave
well upon your discreet remembrance the unmentionable Line of Tripe and
Trotter.”

Another point of comparison which the superficial have failed to record
is to be found in the frequent encouragements to regard The Virtues
which are to be seen, like our own Confucian extracts, freely inscribed
on every wall and suitable place about the city. These for the most part
counsel moderation in taking false oaths, in stepping heedlessly upon
the unknown ground, in following paths which lead to doubtful ends, and
other timely warnings. “Beware a smoke-breathing demon,” is frequently
cast across one’s path upon a barrier, and this person has never failed
to accept the omen and to retrace his steps hastily without looking to
the right or the left. Even our own national caution is not forgotten,
although to conform to barbarian indolence it is written, “Slowly,
slowly; drive slowly.” “Keep to the Right” (or, “Abandon that which is
evil,” as the analogy holds,) is perhaps the most frequently displayed
of all, and doubtless many charitable persons obtain an ever-accruing
merit by hanging the sign bearing these words upon every available post.
Others are of a stern and threatening nature, designed to make the most
hardened ill-doer pause, as--in their own tongue--“Rubbish may be shot
here”; which we should render, “At any moment, and in such a place
as this, a just doom and extinction may overtake the worthless.” This
inscription is never to be seen except in waste expanses, where it
points its significance with a multiplied force. There is another
definite threat which is lavishly set out, and so thoroughly that it may
be encountered in the least frequented and almost inaccessible spots.
This, as it may be translated, reads, “Trespass not the forbidden. The
profligate may flourish like the gourd for a season, but in the
end assuredly they will be detected, and justice meted out with the
relentless fury of the written law.”

In a converse position, the wide difference in the ceremonial forms of
retaliatory invective has practically disarmed this usually eloquent
person, and he long since abandoned every hope of expressing himself
with any satisfaction in encounters of however acrimonious a trend.
At first, with an urbane smile and gestures of dignified contempt, he
impugned the authenticity of the Ancestral Tablets of those with whom
he strove, in an unbroken stream of most bitter contumely. Finding them
silent under this reproach, he next lightly traced their origin back
through generations of afflicted lepers, deformed ape-beings, and
Nameless Things, to a race of primitive ghouls, and then went on in
relentless fluency to predict an early return in their descendants to
the condition of a similar state. For some time he had a well-gratified
assurance that those whom he assailed were so overwhelmed as to be
incapable of retort, and in this belief he never failed to call upon
passers-by to witness his triumph; but on the fourth occasion a young
man whom I had thus publicly denounced for a sufficient though forgotten
reason, after listening courteously to my venomous accusations, bestowed
a two-cash piece upon me and passed on, remarking that it was hard,
and those around, also, would have added from their stores had it
been permitted. From this time onward I did not attempt to make myself
disagreeable either in public or to those whom I esteemed privately. On
the other hand, the barbarian manner of retort did not find me endowed
by nature to parry it successfully. Quite lacking in measured periods,
it aims, by an extreme rapidity of thrust and an insincerity of
sequence, to entangle the one who is assailed in a complication of
arising doubts and emotions. “Who are you,--no one but yourself,”
 exclaimed a hireling of hung-dog expression who claimed to have
exchanged pledging gifts with a certain maiden who stood, as it were,
between us, and falling into the snare, I protested warmly against the
insult, and strove to disprove the inference before the paralogism lay
revealed. Throughout the whole range of the Odes, the Histories, the
Analects, and the Rites what recognised formula of rejoinder is there to
the taunt, “Oh, go and put your feet in mustard and cress”; or how
can one, however skilled in the highest Classics, parry the subtle
inconsistencies of the reproach, “You’re a nice bit of orl right, aren’t
you? Not arf, I don’t think.”

Among the arts of this country that of painting upon canvas is held in
repute, but to a person associated with the masterpieces of the Ma epoch
these native attempts would be gravity-dispelling if they were not too
reminiscent of the torture chamber. It is rarely, indeed, that even the
most highly-esteemed picture-makers succeed in depicting every portion
of a human body submitted to their brush, and not infrequently half
of the face is left out. Once, when asked by a paint-applier who was
entitled to append two signs of exceptional distinction behind his name,
to express an opinion upon a finished work, I diffidently called his
attention to the fact that he had forgotten to introduce a certain
exalted one’s left ear. “Not at all, Mr. Kong,” he replied, with an
expression of ill-merited self-satisfaction, “but it is hidden by the
face.” “Yet it exists,” I contended; “why not, therefore, press it to
the front at all hazard, rather than send so great a statesman down
into the annals of posterity as deformed to that extent?” “It certainly
exists,” he admitted, “and one takes that for granted; but in my picture
it cannot be seen.” I bowed complaisantly, content to let so damaging
an admission point its own despair. A moment later I continued, “In the
great Circular Hall of the Palace of Envoys there is a picture of
two camels, foot-tethered, as it fortunately chanced, to iron rings.
Formerly there were a drove of eight--the others being free--so
exquisitely outlined in all their parts that one night, when the door
had been left incautiously open, they stepped down from the wall and
escaped to the woods. How deplorable would have been the plight of these
unfortunate beings, if upon passing into the state of a living existence
they had found that as a result of the limited vision of their creator
they only possessed twelve legs and three whole bodies among them.”

Perchance this tactfully-related story, so applicable to his own
deficiencies, may sink into the imagination of the one for whom it was
inoffensively unfolded. Yet doubt remains. Our own picture-judgers
take up a position at the side of work when they with to examine its
qualities, retiring to an ever-diminishing angle in order to bring out
the more delicate effects, until a very expert and conscientious critic
will not infrequently stand really behind the picture he is considering
before he delivers a final pronouncement. Not until these native artists
are able to regard their crude attempts from the other side of the
canvas can they hope to become equally proficient. To this fatal
shortcoming must be added that of insatiable ambition, which prompts
the young to the portrayal of widely differing subjects. Into the
picture-room of one who might thus be described this person was recently
conducted, to pass an opinion upon a scene in which were depicted
seven men of varying nationalities and appropriately garbed, one of the
opposing sex carrying a lighted torch, an elephant reclining beneath a
fruitful vine, and the President of a Republic. For a period this person
resisted the efforts of those who would have questioned him, withdrawing
their attention to the harmonious lights upon the river mist floating
far below, but presently, being definitely called upon, he replied as
follows: “Mih Ying, who was perhaps the greatest of his time, spent his
whole life in painting green and yellow beetles in the act of concealing
themselves beneath dead maple leaves upon the approach of day. At the
age of seventy-five he burst into tears, and upon being approached for
a cause he exclaimed, ‘Alas, if only this person had resisted the
temptation to be diffuse, and had confined himself to green beetles
alone, he might now, instead of contemplating a misspent career, have
been really great.’ How much less,” I continued, “can a person of
immature moustaches hope to depict two such conflicting objects as a
recumbent elephant and the President of a Republic standing beneath a
banner?”

Upon the temptation to deal critically with the religious instincts of
the islanders this person draws an obliterating brush. As practically
every traveller who has honoured our unattractive land with his
effusive presence has subsequently left it in a printed record that
our ceremonies are grotesque, our priesthood ignorant and depraved,
our monasteries and sacred places spots of plague upon an otherwise
flower-adorned landscape, and our beliefs and sacrifices only worthy to
exist for the purpose of being made into jest-origins by more refined
communities, the omission on this one’s part may appear uncivil and
perhaps even intentionally discourteous. To this, as a burner of
joss-sticks and an irregular person, he can only reply by a deprecatory
waving of both hands and a reassuring smile.

With the two-sided memories of many other details hanging thickly around
his brush, it would not be an achievement to continue to a practically
inexhaustible amount. As of the set days when certain things are
observed, among which fall the first of the fourth month (but that would
disclose another involvement), another when flat cakes are partaken
of without due caution, another when rounder cakes are even more
incautiously consumed, and that most brightly-illuminated of all when it
is permissible to embrace maidens openly, and if discreetly accomplished
with no overhanging fear of ensuing forms of law, beneath the emblem of
a suspended branch, in memory of the wisdom of certain venerable sages
who were doubtless expert in the practice. As of the inconvenient
custom when two persons are walking together that they should arrange
themselves side by side, to the obvious discomfort of others, the
sweeping away of all opportunities for agreeable politeness, and
the utter disregard of the time-honoured example of the sagacious
water-fowl. As of the inconsistency of refusing, even with contempt, to
receive our most intimate form of regard and use this person’s lip-cloth
after a feast, yet the mulish eagerness in that same youth to drink from
a cup previously used by a lesser one. As of the precision (which still
remains a cloud of doubt,) with which creatures so intractable as the
bull are successfully trained to roar aloud at certain gong-strokes of
the day as an agreed signal. As of the streets in movement, the lights
at evening, and the voices of those unseen. As of these and as of other
matters, so multitudinous that they crowd about this person’s mind
like the assembling swallows, circling above the deserted millet
fields before they turn their beaks to the sea, and dropping his brush
(perchance with an acquiescent sigh), he, also, kow-tows submissively
to a blind but appointed destiny, and prepares to seek a passage from an
alien land of sojourning.

With the impetuous craving of an affectionate son to behold a revered
sire, intensified by the fact that he has reached the innermost lining
of his sleeve; with affectionate greetings towards Ning, Hia-Fa, and
T’ian Yen, and an assurance that they have never been really absent from
his thoughts.

KONG HO.


 Ernest Bramah, of whom in his lifetime Who’s Who had so
 little to say, was born in Manchester. At seventeen he chose
 farming as a profession, but after three years of losing
 money gave it up to go into journalism. He started as
 correspondent on a typical provincial paper, then went to
 London as secretary to Jerome K. Jerome, and worked himself
 into the editorial side of Jerome’s magazine, To-day, where
 he got the opportunity of meeting the most important
 literary figures of the day. But he soon left To-day to
 join a new publishing firm, as editor of a publication
 called The Minister; finally, after two years of this, he
 turned to writing as his full-time occupation. He was
 intensely interested in coins and published a book on the
 English regal copper coinage. He is, however, best known as
 the creator of the charming character Kai Lung who appears
 in Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat, Kai Lung’s Golden Hours, The
 Wallet of Kai Lung, Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree, The
 Mirror of Kong Ho, and The Moon of Much Gladness; he also
 wrote two one-act plays which are often performed at London
 variety theatres, and many stories and articles in leading
 periodicals. He died in 1942.





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