e perceives
the reasonableness of assuming a deferential obsequiousness before a
mandarin of the fifth rank, and a counterbalancing arrogance when in the
society of an official who has only risen to the seventh degree, thus
conforming to that essential principle of harmonious intercourse,
"Remember that Chang Chow's ceiling is Tong Wi's floor"; but who shall
walk with even footsteps in a land where the most degraded may legally
bear the same distinguished name as that of the enlightened sovereign
himself, where the admittedly difficult but even more purposeless
achievement of causing a gold mine to float is held to be more
praiseworthy than to pass a competitive examination or to compose a
poem of inimitable brilliance, and where one wearing gilt buttons and an
emblem in his hat proves upon ingratiating approach not to be a powerful
official but a covetous and illiterate slave of inferior rank?
Thus, through their own narrow-minded inconsistencies, even the most
ceremoniously-proficient may at times present an ill-balanced attitude.
This, without reproach to himself, concerns the inward cause whereby
the one who is placed to you in the relation of an affectionate and
ever-resourceful son found unexpectedly that he had lost the benignant
full face of a lady of exalted title.

At that time I had formed the acquaintance, in an obscure quarter of the
city, of one who wore a uniform, and was addressed on all sides as the
commander of a band, while the gold letters upon the neck part of his
outer garment inevitably suggested that he had borne an honourable share
in the recent campaign in a distant land. As I had frequently met many
of similar rank drinking tea at the house of the engaging countess to
whom I have alluded, I did not hesitate to prevail upon this Captain
Miggs to accompany me there upon an occasion also, assuring him of
equality and a sympathetic reception; but from the moment of our
arrival the attitudes of those around pointed to the existence of some
unpropitious barrier invisible to me, and when the one with whom I was
associated took up an unassailable position upon the central table,
and began to speak authoritatively upon the subject of The Virtues,
the unenviable condition of the proud and affluent, and the myriads of
fire-demons certainly laying in wait for those who partook of spiced tea
and rich foods in the afternoon, and did not wear a uniform similar to
his own, I began to recognise that the select