glide like the gold and silver carp beneath the sacred river.

When this insurpassable being approached me with the flattering
petition already alluded to, my gratified emotions clashed together
uncontrollably with the internal feeling of many volcanoes in
movement, and my organs of expression became so entangled at the
condescension of her melodious voice being directly addressed to one
so degraded, that for several minutes I was incapable of further
acquiescence than that conveyed by an adoring silence and an
unchanging smile. No formality appeared worthy to greet her by, no
expression of self-contempt sufficiently offensive to convey to her
enlightenment my own sense of a manifold inferiority, and doubtless I
should have remained in a transfixed attitude until she had at length
turned aside, had not your seasonable reference to a Swatow
limb-contorter struck me heavily and abruptly turned off the source of
my agreement. Might not this all-water entertainment, it occurred to
this one, consist in enticing him to drink a potion made unsuspectedly
hot, in projecting him backwards into a vat of the same liquid, or
some similar device for the pleasurable amusement of those around,
which would come within the boundaries of your refined disapproval? As
one by himself there was no indignity that this person would not
cheerfully have submitted to, but the inexorable cords of an ingrained
filial regard suddenly pulled him sideways and into another direction.

"But, Mr. Kong," exclaimed the bee-lipped maiden, when I had explained
(as being less involved to her imagination,) that I was under a vow,
"we have been relying upon you. Could you not"--and here she dropped
her eyes and picked them up again with a fluttering motion which our
lesser ones are, to an all-wise end, quite unacquainted with--"could
you not unvow yourself for one night, just to please ME?"