an engaging effusion, or, without actual offence, draw back into a
condition of unapproachable exclusiveness as the necessity may arise.
With us, O my immaculate sire, a yellow silk umbrella has for three
thousand years denoted a fixed and recognisable title. A mandarin of
the sixth degree need not hesitate to mingle on terms of assured
equality with other mandarins of the sixth degree, and without any
guide beyond a seemly instinct he perceives the reasonableness of
assuming a deferential obsequiousness before a mandarin of the fifth
rank, and a counterbalancing arrogance when in the society of an
official who has only risen to the seventh degree, thus conforming to
that essential principle of harmonious intercourse, "Remember that
Chang Chow's ceiling is Tong Wi's floor"; but who shall walk with even
footsteps in a land where the most degraded may legally bear the same
distinguished name as that of the enlightened sovereign himself, where
the admittedly difficult but even more purposeless achievement of
causing a gold mine to float is held to be more praiseworthy than to
pass a competitive examination or to compose a poem of inimitable
brilliance, and where one wearing gilt buttons and an emblem in his
hat proves upon ingratiating approach not to be a powerful official
but a covetous and illiterate slave of inferior rank? Thus, through
their own narrow-minded inconsistencies, even the most
ceremoniously-proficient may at times present an ill-balanced
attitude. This, without reproach to himself, concerns the inward cause
whereby the one who is placed to you in the relation of an
affectionate and ever-resourceful son found unexpectedly that he
had lost the benignant full face of a lady of exalted title.

At that time I had formed the acquaintance, in an obscure quarter of
the city, of one who wore a uniform, and was addressed on all sides as
the commander of a band, while the gold letters upon the neck part of