"
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.
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