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.
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