a hinsect. Something, I take it, after the manner of a grass-'opper."

"Truly," I agreed. "It is aptly likened. And, to continue the simile,
a game cricket--?"

"A game cricket?" he replied; "well, sir, naturally a game one would
be more gamier than the others, wouldn't it?"

"The inference is unflinching," I admitted, and after successfully
luring away his mind from any significance in the inquiry by asking
him whether the gift of a lacquered coffin or an embroidered shroud
would be the more regarded on parting, I left him.

His words, esteemed, for a definite reason were as the jade-clappered
melody of a silver bell. This trial of sportiveness, it became
clear,--less of a massacre than most of their amusements--is really a
rivalry of leapings and dexterity of the feet: a conflict of game
crickets or grass-hoppers, in the somewhat wide-angled obscurity of
their language, or, as we would more appropriately call it doubtless,
a festive competition in the similitude of high-spirited locusts. To
whatever degree the surrounding conditions might vary, there could no
longer be a doubt that the power of leaping high into the air was the
essential constituent of success in this barbarian match of
crickets--and in such an accomplishment this person excelled from the
time of his youth with a truly incredible proficiency. Can it be a
reproach, then, that when I considered this, and saw in a vision the
contempt of inferiority which I should certainly be able to inflict
upon these native crickets before the eyes of their maidens, even the
accumulated impassiveness of thirty-seven generations of Kong
fore-fathers broke down for the moment, and unable to restrain every