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d your supple hands with their long nails are piously folded. You rock to and fro rhythmically. Your voice, rising and falling in clear nasal monosyllables, flows on steadily, monotonously, like the flowing of water and the flowering of thought. You are chanting, it seems, of the pious conduct of man in all ages, And I know you for a scoundrel. None the less the maxims of Confucius are venerable, and your voice pleasant. I listen attentively.... Wusih The Story Teller In a corner of the market-place he sits, his face the target for many eyes. The sombre crowd about him is motionless. Behind their faces no lamp burns; only their eyes glow faintly with a reflected light. For their eyes are on his face. It alone is alive, is vibrant, moving bronze under a sun of bronze. The taut skin, like polished metal, shines along his cheek and jaw. His eyes cut upward from a slender nose, and his quick mouth moves sharply out and in. Artful are the gestures of his mouth, elaborate and full of guile. When he draws back the bow of his lips his face is like a mask of lacquer, set with teeth of pearl, fantastic, terrible.... What strange tale lives in the gestures of his mouth? Does a fox-maiden, bewitching, tiny-footed, lure a scholar to his doom? Is an unfilial son tortured of devils? Or does a decadent queen sport with her eunuchs? I cannot tell. The faces of the people are wooden; only their eyes burn dully with a reflected light. I shall never know. I am alien ... alien. Nanking The Well The Second Well under Heaven lies at the foot of the Sacred Mountain. Perhaps the well is sacred because it is clean; or perhaps it is clean because it is sacred. I cannot tell. At the bottom of the well are coppers and coins with square holes in them, thrown thither by devout hands. They gleam enticingly through the shallow water. The people crowd about the well, leaning brown covetous faces above the coping as my copper falls slantwise to rest. Perhaps it will bring me luck, who knows? It is a very sacred well. Or perhaps, when it is quite dark, someone who is hungry.... Then the luck will be his! The Village of the Mud Idols The Abandoned God In the cold darkness of eternity he sits, this god who has grown old. His rounded eyes are open on the whir of time, but m
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