imself to be caught out in the committal of fifty-nine set
offences.

With a not unnatural anticipation that, as a result of this painstaking
description, this person will find two well-equipped camps of contending
locusts in Yuen-ping on his return.

KONG HO.

LETTER XII

Concerning the obvious misunderstanding which has entwined
itself about a revered parent's faculties of passionless
discrimination. The all-water disportment and the two, of
different sexes, who after regarding me conflictingly from
the beginning, ended in a like but inverted manner.

VENERATED SIRE,--Your gem-adorned letter containing a thousand burnished
words of profuse reproach has entered my diminished soul in the form
of an equal number of rusty barbs. Can it be that the incapable
person whom, as you truly say, you sent, "to observe the philosophical
subtleties of the barbarians, to study their dynastical records and to
associate liberally with the venerable and dignified," has, in your
own unapproachable felicity of ceremonial expression, "according to
a discreet whisper from many sources, chiefly affected the society of
tea-house maidens, the immature of both sexes, doubtful characters of
all classes, and criminals awaiting trial; has evinced an unswerving
affinity towards light amusement and entertainments of a no-class kind;
and in place of a wise aloofness, befitting a wearer of the third Gold
Button and the Horn Belt-clasp, in situations of critical perplexity,
seems by his own ingenuous showing to have maintained an unparalleled
aptitude for behaving either with the crystalline simplicity of a
Kan-su earth-tiller, or the misplaced buffoonery of a seventh-grade
body-writher taking the least significant part in an ill-equipped Swatow
one-cash Hall of Varied Melodies." Assuredly, if your striking and
well-chosen metaphors were not more unbalanced than the ungainly
attitude of a one-legged hunchback crossing a raging torrent by means
of a slippery plank on a stormy night, they would cause the very acutest
bitterness to the throat of a dutiful and always high-stepping son.
There is an apt saying, however, "A quarrel between two soldiers in the
market-place becomes a rebellion in the outskirts," and when this person
remembers that many thousand li of mixed elements flow between him and
his usually correct and dispassionate sire, he is impelled to take a
mild and tolerant attitude towards the momentary injustice brought abou