expressing himself
with any satisfaction in encounters of however acrimonious a trend.
At first, with an urbane smile and gestures of dignified contempt, he
impugned the authenticity of the Ancestral Tablets of those with whom
he strove, in an unbroken stream of most bitter contumely. Finding them
silent under this reproach, he next lightly traced their origin back
through generations of afflicted lepers, deformed ape-beings, and
Nameless Things, to a race of primitive ghouls, and then went on in
relentless fluency to predict an early return in their descendants to
the condition of a similar state. For some time he had a well-gratified
assurance that those whom he assailed were so overwhelmed as to be
incapable of retort, and in this belief he never failed to call upon
passers-by to witness his triumph; but on the fourth occasion a young
man whom I had thus publicly denounced for a sufficient though forgotten
reason, after listening courteously to my venomous accusations, bestowed
a two-cash piece upon me and passed on, remarking that it was hard,
and those around, also, would have added from their stores had it
been permitted. From this time onward I did not attempt to make myself
disagreeable either in public or to those whom I esteemed privately. On
the other hand, the barbarian manner of retort did not find me endowed
by nature to parry it successfully. Quite lacking in measured periods,
it aims, by an extreme rapidity of thrust and an insincerity of
sequence, to entangle the one who is assailed in a complication of
arising doubts and emotions. "Who are you,--no one but yourself,"
exclaimed a hireling of hung-dog expression who claimed to have
exchanged pledging gifts with a certain maiden who stood, as it were,
between us, and falling into the snare, I protested warmly against the
insult, and strove to disprove the inference before the paralogism lay
revealed. Throughout the whole range of the Odes, the Histories, the
Analects, and the Rites what recognised formula of rejoinder is there to
the taunt, "Oh, go and put your feet in mustard and cress"; or how
can one, however skilled in the highest Classics, parry the subtle
inconsistencies of the reproach, "You're a nice bit of orl right, aren't
you? Not arf, I don't think."

Among the arts of this country that of painting upon canvas is held in
repute, but to a person associated with the masterpieces of the Ma epoch
these native attempts would be gravity-dispelling i