m, perchance, and dwelling
in a northern province, to whom I would be compelled to assign my
peach-orchard at Yuen-ping. Then by varying degrees of infamy I would
in turn be driven to visit a certain Bevel of the Middle Lands, a person
Edge carrying on his insatiable traffic on the southern coast, one Grey
elsewhere, and a Mr. Son, of the west, who might make an honourable
profession of lending money without any security whatever, but who in
the end would possess himself of my ancestral tablets, wives, and inlaid
coffin, and probably also obtain a lien upon my services and prosperity
in the Upper Air. Then, when I had parted from all comfort in this
life, and every hope of affluence in the Beyond, it would presently
be disclosed that all these were in reality as one person who had
unceasingly plotted to my destruction, and William Beveledge Greyson
would stand revealed in the guise of a malevolent vampire. Truly that
development has at this moment an appearance of unreality, and worthy
even of pooh-pooh, but thus is the warning spread by your own printed
papers and the records of your Halls of Justice, and it would be an
unseemly presumption for one of my immature experience to ignore the
outstretched and warning finger of authority."

"Well, Kong," he said at length, after considering my words attentively,
"I always thought that your mental outlook was a hash of Black Art,
paper lanterns, blank verse, twilight, and delirium tremens, but hang me
if you aren't sound on finance, and I only wish that you'd get some of
my friends to look at the matter of borrowing in your own reasonable,
broad-minded light. The question is, what next?"

I replied that I leaned heavily against his sagacious insight, adding,
however, that even among a nation of barbarians one who could repeat
the three hundred and eleven poems comprising the Book of Odes from
beginning to end, and claim the degree "Assured Genius" would ever be
certain of a place.

"Yes," replied William Greyson,--"in the workhouse. Put your degree in
your inside pocket, Kong, and don't mention it. You'll have far more
chance as a distressed mariner. The casual wards are full of B.A.'s,
but the navy can't get enough A.B.'s at any price. What do you say to
an organ, by the way? Mysterious musicians generally go down well, and
I dare say there's room for a change from veiled ladies, persecuted
captains and indigent earls. You ought to make a sensation."

"Is it in the natur