her invocations from which he could not wrest the
hidden significance, as "Old Vatted," "Barclay's Entire," "An Ordinary
at One," and the like.

By this time an impressive gathering had drawn around, and from its
manner of behaving conveyed the suspicion that an entertainment or
manifestation of some kind was confidently awaited. To disperse so
outrageous a misconception this person was on the point of withdrawing
himself when he chanced to see, over the principal door of the Temple,
a solid gold figure of colossal magnitude, represented as crowned with
leaves and tendrils, and holding in his outstretched hands a gigantic,
and doubtless symbolic, bunch of grapes. "This," I said to myself, "is
evidently the tutelary deity of the place, so displayed to receive the
worship of the passer-by." With the discovery a thought of the most
irreproachable benevolence possessed me. "Why should not this person," I
reflected, "gain the unstinted approbation of those barbarians" (who by
this time completely encircled me in) "by doing obeisance towards their
deity, and by the same act delicately and inoffensively rebuke them for
their own too-frequent intolerable attitude towards the susceptibilities
of others? As an unprejudiced follower, in his own land, of the systems
of Confucius, Lao-tse, and Buddha, this person already recognises the
claims of seventeen thousand nine hundred and thirty-three deities of
various grades, so that the addition of one more to that number can be
a heresy of very trivial expiation." Inspired by these honourable
sentiments, therefore, I at once prostrated myself on the ground, and,
amid a silence of really illimitable expectation, I began to kow-tow
repeatedly with ceremonious precision.

At this display of charitable broadmindedness an approving shout went
up on all sides. Thus encouraged I proceeded to kow-tow with even more
unceasing assiduousness, and presently words of definite encouragement
mingled with the shout. "Do not flag in your amiable disinterestedness,
Kong Ho," I whispered in my ear, "and out of your well-sustained
endurance may perchance arise a cordial understanding, and ultimately
a remunerative alliance between two distinguished nations." Filled with
this patriotic hope I did not suffer my neck to stiffen, and doubtless I
would have continued the undertaking as long as the sympathetic persons
who hemmed me in signified their refined approval, when suddenly the cry
was raised, "Look out