lat cakes are partaken
of without due caution, another when rounder cakes are even more
incautiously consumed, and that most brightly-illuminated of all when it
is permissible to embrace maidens openly, and if discreetly accomplished
with no overhanging fear of ensuing forms of law, beneath the emblem of
a suspended branch, in memory of the wisdom of certain venerable sages
who were doubtless expert in the practice. As of the inconvenient
custom when two persons are walking together that they should arrange
themselves side by side, to the obvious discomfort of others, the
sweeping away of all opportunities for agreeable politeness, and
the utter disregard of the time-honoured example of the sagacious
water-fowl. As of the inconsistency of refusing, even with contempt, to
receive our most intimate form of regard and use this person's lip-cloth
after a feast, yet the mulish eagerness in that same youth to drink from
a cup previously used by a lesser one. As of the precision (which still
remains a cloud of doubt,) with which creatures so intractable as the
bull are successfully trained to roar aloud at certain gong-strokes of
the day as an agreed signal. As of the streets in movement, the lights
at evening, and the voices of those unseen. As of these and as of other
matters, so multitudinous that they crowd about this person's mind
like the assembling swallows, circling above the deserted millet
fields before they turn their beaks to the sea, and dropping his brush
(perchance with an acquiescent sigh), he, also, kow-tows submissively
to a blind but appointed destiny, and prepares to seek a passage from an
alien land of sojourning.

With the impetuous craving of an affectionate son to behold a revered
sire, intensified by the fact that he has reached the innermost lining
of his sleeve; with affectionate greetings towards Ning, Hia-Fa, and
T'ian Yen, and an assurance that they have never been really absent from
his thoughts.

KONG HO.

Ernest Bramah, of whom in his lifetime Who's Who had so
little to say, was born in Manchester. At seventeen he chose
farming as a profession, but after three years of losing
money gave it up to go into journalism. He started as
correspondent on a typical provincial paper, then went to
London as secretary to Jerome K. Jerome, and worked himself
into the editorial side of Jerome's magazine, To-day, where
he got the opportunity of meeting the most important
literary figures of the