peep out. Then he was introduced to a large circle of mandarins who
stood round, incessantly bowing to one another. He began to bow too,
as if he had done nothing else all his life, and when dinner was
served, managed his chop-sticks most dexterously, and smoked as if
smoking had been his only vocation. In short, he ate and bobbed, and
slept and woke, in the most approved manner.

Now he had attained the summit of his wishes. Every thing was entirely
Chinese,--jars, mats, sweetmeats, dresses, bobbing, and stupidity.
Rank, luxury, grandeur he called it, and for a while flattered himself
that he was immersed in perfect happiness; but, somehow,--he could not
tell what it was; perhaps he was not quite old enough,--but somehow he
did become a little weary of being a mandarin. The palace was
deliciously perfumed, but he longed for a puff of fresh wind. Nothing
could be richer than their dresses, but the embroidery was rather
heavy. Nothing could be profounder than their politeness, but it would
have been a relief to have given some boy a good snowballing. Nothing
could be serener than their silence, but he would gladly have given
any body three cheers for nothing.

He began to make plans for escape from this palace of his desires,
when one morning, just as one venerable mandarin was saying to
another, in their usual edifying style of conversation, "Pelican of
the Morning, before the magic charm of thy lofty countenance I am
spell-bound, like an albatross bewildered amid the flapping sails of a
mighty--" down burst the door with a crash, and a lion rushed roaring
in among them. What a scrambling there was of the long-flowered
dresses! What a tumbling, a flying, a groaning, a screaming! Never
before were such confusion and fear in an assembly of bobbing
mandarins. But Gaspar felt his breast swell with courage. Throwing