“For what reason?” said Wang Yu proudly.  “At this person’s very door is a pit of red clay, purer and infinitely more regular than any to be found at Honan; the hard wood of Wu-whei is extolled among carvers throughout the Empire, while no bamboo is straighter or more smooth than that which grows in the neighbouring woods.”

“O most inconsistent Wang Yu!” cried the story-teller, “assuredly a very commendable local pride has dimmed your usually penetrating eyesight.  Is not the clay pit of which you speak that in which you fashioned exceedingly unsymmetrical imitations of rat-pies in your childhood?  How, then, can it be equal to those of Honan, which you have never seen?  In the dark glades of these woods have you not chased the gorgeous butterfly, and, in later years, the no less gaily attired maidens of Wu-whei in the entrancing game of Kiss in the Circle?  Have not the bamboo-trees to which you have referred provided you with the ideal material wherewith to roof over those cunningly-constructed pits into which it has ever been the chief delight of the young and audacious to lure dignified and unnaturally stout Mandarins?  All these things you have seen and used ever since your mother made a successful offering to the Goddess Kum-Fa.  How, then, can they be even equal to the products of remote Honan and fabulous Peking?  Assuredly the generally veracious Wang Yu speaks this time with closed eyes and will, upon mature reflexion, eat his words.”

The silence was broken by a very aged man who arose from among the bystanders.

“Behold the length of this person’s pigtail,” he exclaimed, “the whiteness of his moustaches and the venerable appearance of his beard!  There is no more aged person present—­if, indeed, there be such a one in all the Province.  It accordingly devolves upon him to speak in this matter, which shall be as follows:  The noble-minded and proficient Kai Lung shall relate the story as he has proposed, and the garrulous Wang Yu shall twice contribute to Kai Lung’s bowl when it is passed round, once for himself and once for this person, in order that he may learn either to be more discreet or more proficient in the art of aptly replying.”

“The events which it is this person’s presumptuous intention to describe to this large-hearted and providentially indulgent gathering,” began Kai Lung, when his audience had become settled, and the wooden bowl had passed to and fro among them, “did not occupy many years, although they were of a nature which made them of far more importance than all the remainder of his existence, thereby supporting the sage discernment of the philosopher Wen-weng, who first made the observation that man is greatly inferior to the meanest fly, inasmuch as that creature, although granted only a day’s span of life, contrives during that period to fulfil all the allotted functions of existence.