between the teeth; a written promise to pay may be disposed of at a
sacrifice to one more credulous; but what shall be said of the wind,
the Hoang Ho, and the way of a woman?"

To contrive a pitfall for this short-sighted person's immature feet,
certain malicious spirits had so willed it that the chief and more
autumnal of the Maidens Blank (who, nevertheless, wore an excessively
flower-like name), had long lavished herself upon the possession of an
obtuse and self-assertive hound, which was in the habit of gratifying
this inconsiderable person and those who sat around by continually
depositing upon their unworthy garments details of its outer surface,
and when the weather was more than usually cold, by stretching its
graceful and refined body before the fire in such a way as to ensure
that no one should suffer from a too acute exposure to the heat. From
these causes, and because it was by nature a hound which even on the
darkest night could be detected at a more than reasonable distance
away, while at all times it did not hesitate to shake itself freely
into the various prepared viands, this person (and doubtless others
also) regarded it with an emotion very unfavourable towards its
prolonged existence; but observing from the first that those who
permitted themselves to be deposited upon, and their hands and even
their faces to be hound-tongue-defiled with the most externally
cheerful spirit of word suppression, invariably received the most
desirable of the allotted portions of food, he judged it prudent and
conducive to a settled digestion to greet it with favourable terms and
actions, and to refer frequently to its well-displayed proportions,
and to the agile dexterity which it certainly maintained in breathing
into the contents of every dish. Thus the matter may be regarded as
being positioned for a space of time.