n beyond the Lotus Beds outside the city of Yuen-ping.
The Middle Flowery Kingdom.

LETTER II

Concerning the ill-destined manner of existence of the hound
Hercules. The thoughtlessly-expressed desire of the
entrancing maiden and its effect upon a person of
susceptible refinement. The opportune (as it may yet be
described) visit of one Herbert. The behaviour of those
around. Reflections.

VENERATED SIRE (whose large right hand is continuously floating in
spirit over the image of this person's dutiful submission),--

Doubtless to your all-consuming prescience, it will at once become plain
that I have abandoned the place of residence from which I directed my
former badly-written and offensively-constructed letter, the house of
the sympathetic and resourceful Maidens Blank, where in return for an
utterly inadequate sum of money, produced at stated intervals, this very
much inferior person was allowed to partake of a delicately-balanced and
somewhat unvarying fare in the company of the engaging of both sexes,
and afterwards to associate on terms of honourable equality with them in
the chief apartment. The reason and manner of this one's departure
are in no degree formidable to his refined manner of conducting any
enterprise, but arose partly from an insufficient grasp of the more
elaborate outlines of a confessedly involved language, and still more
from a too excessive impetuousness in carrying out what at the time he
believed to be the ambition of one who had come to exercise a melodious
influence over his most internal emotions. Well remarked the Sage, "A
piece of gold may be tried 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