esteem from one end of the Empire to the other, while taels and
honourable decorations would have been showered upon him. For the
truth, which could no longer be concealed, revealed the fact that this
inopportune individual possessed a mind framed in such a manner that
his thoughts had already been the thoughts of the inspired Lo Kuan,
who, as this person would not be so presumptuous as to inform this
ornamental and well-informed gathering, was the most ingenious and
versatile-minded composer of written words that this Empire--and
therefore the entire world--has seen, as, indeed, his honourable title
of 'The Many-hued Mandarin Duck of the Yang-tse' plainly indicates.

"Although this self-opinionated person had frequently been greatly
surprised himself during the writing of his long work by the
brilliance and manysidedness of the thoughts and metaphors which arose
in his mind without conscious effort, it was not until the appearance
of the printed leaves which make a custom of warning persons against
being persuaded into buying certain books that he definitely
understood how all these things had been fully expressed many
dynasties ago by the all-knowing Lo Kuan Chang, and formed, indeed,
the great national standard of unapproachable excellence.
Unfortunately, this person had been so deeply engrossed all his life
in literary pursuits that he had never found an opportunity to glance
at the works in question, or he would have escaped the embarrassing
position in which he now found himself.

"It was with a hopeless sense of illness of ease that this unhappy one
reached the day on which the printed leaves already alluded to would
make known their deliberate opinion of his writing, the extremity of
his hope being that some would at least credit him with honourable
motives, and perhaps a knowledge that if the inspired Lo Kuan Chan had