“Behold,” said the lesser one, insidiously stepping in between this person an the inner door, “my intellectual and all-knowing chief is not here to-day.  May his entirely insufficient substitute offer words of congratulation to the inspired Kin Yen on his effective and striking pictures in this week’s issue?”

“His altogether insufficient substitute,” answered this person, with difficulty mastering his great rage, “may and shall offer words of explanation to the inspired Kin Yen, setting forth the reason of his pictures being used, not with the high-minded story of the elegant Tong-king for which they were executed, but accompanying exceedingly base, foolish, and ungrammatical words written by Klan-hi, the Peking remover of gravity—­words which will evermore brand the dew-like Tien as a person of light speech and no refinement”; and in his agony this person struck the lacquered table several times with his elegant knife.

“O Kin Yen,” exclaimed the lesser one, “this matter rests not here.  It is a thing beyond the sphere of the individual who is addressing you.  All he can tell is that the graceful Tong-king withdrew his exceedingly tedious story for some reason at the final moment, and as your eminent drawings had been paid for, my chief of the inner office decided to use them with this story of Klan-hi.  But surely it cannot be that there is aught in the story to displease your illustrious personality?”

“Judge for yourself,” this person said, “first understanding that the two immaculate characters figuring as the personages of the narrative are exact copies of this dishonoured person himself and of the willowy Tien, daughter of the vastly rich Pe-li-Chen, whom he was hopeful of marrying.”

Selecting one of the least offensive of the passages in the work, this unhappy person read the following immature and inelegant words: 

“This well-satisfied writer of printed leaves had a highly-distinguished time last night.  After Chow had departed to see about food, and the junk had been fastened up at the lock of Kilung, on the Yang-tse-Kiang, he and the round-bodied Shang were journeying along the narrow path by the river-side when the right leg of the graceful and popular person who is narrating these events disappeared into the river.  Suffering no apprehension in the dark, but that the vanishing limb was the left leg of Shang, this intelligent writer allowed his impassiveness to melt away to an exaggerated degree; but at that moment the circumstance became plain to the round-bodied Shang, who was in consequence very grossly amused at the mishap and misapprehension of your good lord, the writer, at the same time pointing out the matter as it really was.  Then it chanced that there came by one of the maidens who carry tea and jest for small sums of money to the sitters at the little tables with round white tops, at which this remarkable person, the confidant of many mandarins, ever desirous of displaying his priceless power of removing gravity, said to her: