uncommonly good--something like turtle, I should imagine. I'll see if
they can get it for me at Pimm's."

This filial tribute goes by a trusty hand, in the person of one Ki
Nihy, who is shortly committing himself to the protection of his
ancestors and the voracity of the unbounded Bitter Waters; and with
brightness and gold it will doubtless reach you in the course of
twelve or eighteen moons. The superstitious here, this person may
describe, when they wish to send messages from one to another,
inscribe upon the outer cover a written representation of the one
whose habitation they require, and after affixing a small paper
talisman, drop it into a hole in the nearest wall, in the hope that it
may be ultimately conveyed to the appointed spot, either by the
services of the charitably-disposed passer-by, or by the intervention
of the beneficent deities.

With a multiplicity of greetings and many abject expressions of a
conscious inferiority, and attested by an unvarying thumb-mark.

KONG HO.
(Effete branch of a pure and magnanimous trunk.)



To Kong Ah-Paik, reclining beneath the sign of the Lead Tortoise, in a
northerly direction beyond the Lotus Beds outside the city of
Yuen-ping. The Middle Flowery Kingdom.