longer necessary incentive to his success. With every hope, therefore,
he went forth to dispose of his written leaves, confident of finding
some very wealthy person who would be in a condition to pay him the
correct value of the work.

"At the end of two years this somewhat disillusionized but still
undaunted person chanced to hear of a benevolent and unassuming body
of men who made a habit of issuing works in which they discerned
merit, but which, nevertheless, others were unanimous in describing as
'of no good.' Here this person was received with gracious effusion,
and being in a position to impress those with whom he was dealing with
his undoubted knowledge of the subject, he finally succeeded in making
a very advantageous arrangement by which he was to pay one-half of the
number of taels expended in producing the work, and to receive in
return all the profits which should result from the undertaking. Those
who were concerned in the matter were so engagingly impressed with the
incomparable literary merit displayed in the production that they
counselled a great number of copies being made ready in order, as they
said, that this person should not lose by there being any delay when
once the accomplishment became the one topic of conversation in
tea-houses and yamens. From this cause it came about that the matter
of taels to be expended was much greater than had been anticipated at
the beginning, so that when the day arrived on which the volumes were
to be sent forth this person found that almost his last piece of money
had disappeared.

"Alas! how small a share has a person in the work of controlling his
own destiny. Had only the necessarily penurious and now almost
degraded Kai Lung been born a brief span before the great writer Lo
Kuan Chang, his name would have been received with every mark of