"Because," replied this person, colouring deeply, and scarcely able to
control his unbearable offence that so irreproachably-moulded a
creature should openly refer to the detail, "because it is a gross and
unrefined particular, much more internal and much less
pleasantly-outlined than those extremities whose spoken equivalent
shall henceforth be an abandoned word from my lips."

"But, in any case, it is not the actual organ that one infers,"
protested the maiden. "As the seat of the affections, passions,
virtues, and will, it is the conventional emblem of every thought and
emotion."

"By no means," I cried, forgetting in the face of so heterodox an
assertion that it would be well to walk warily at every point. "That
is the stomach."

"Ah!" exclaimed the maiden, burying her face in a gracefully-perfumed
remnant of lace, to so overwhelming a degree that for the moment I
feared she might become involved in the dizzy falling. "Never, by any
mischance, use that word again the society of the presentable, Mr.
Kong."

"The ceremonial usage of my own land of the Heavenly Dynasty is
proverbially elaborate," I said, with a gesture of self-abasement,
"but in comparison with yours it may be regarded as an undeviating
walk when opposed to a stately and many-figured dance. Among the
company of the really excessively select (in which must ever be
included the one whom I am now addressing), it becomes difficult for
an outcast of my illimitable obtuseness to move to one side or the
other without putting his foot into that."