To enable my mind to retranquillise, I approached a youth of
highly-gilded appearance, and, with many predictions of
self-inferiority, I suggested that we should engage in the stimulating
rivalry of feather ball. When he learned, however, that the diversion
consisted in propelling upwards a feather-trimmed chip by striking it
against the side of the foot, he candidly replied that he was afraid
he had grown out of shuttle-cock, but did not mind, if I was
vigorously inclined, "taking me on for a set of yang-pong."

Old men here, it is said, do not fly kites, and they affect to despise
catching flies for amusement, although they frequently go fishing.
Struck by this peculiarity, I put it in the form of an inquiry to one
of venerable appearance, why, when at least five score flies were
undeniably before his eyes, he preferred to recline for lengthy
periods by the side of a stream endeavouring to snare creatures of
whose existence he himself had never as yet received any adequate
proof. Doubtless in my contemptible ignorance, however, I used some
word inaccurately, for those who stood around suffered themselves
to become amused, and the one in question replied with no pretence of
amiable condescension that the jest had already been better expressed
a hundred times, and that I would find the behind parts of a printed
leaf called "Punch" in the bookcase. Not being desirous of carrying on
a conversation of which I felt that I had misplaced the most highly
rectified ingredient, I bowed repeatedly, and replied affably that
wisdom ruled his left side and truth his right.

It was upon this same occasion that a young man of unprejudiced
wide-mindedness, taking me aside, asserted that the matter had not been
properly set forth when I was inquiring about kites. Both old and
young men, he continued, frequently endeavoured to fly kites, even in