teen feet in length with
a dash and impetuosity which no enemy is able to withstand.

[Page 114]
Other characters are equally fixed in the public mind. Tsao Tsao,
the chief antagonist of Liu Pi, is not merely a usurper: he is a
curious compound of genius, fraud, and cruelty. Another conspicuous
actor is Lue Pu, an archer able to split a reed at a hundred paces,
and a horseman who performs prodigies on the field of battle. He
begins his career by shooting his adopted father, like Brutus perhaps,
not because he loved Tung Choh less, but China more.

All these and others too numerous to mention may be seen any day
on the boards of the theatre, an institution which, in China at
least, serves as a school for the illiterate.[*]

[Footnote *: The stage is usually a platform on the open street
where an actor may be seen changing his role with his costume,
now wearing the mask of one and then of another of the contending
chieftains, and changing his voice, always in a falsetto key, to
produce something like variety.]

Liu Pi succeeds, after a struggle of twenty years, in establishing
himself in the province of Szechuen; but he enjoys undisturbed dominion
in his limited realm for three years only, and then transmits his
crown to a youthful son whom he commends to the care of a faithful
minister. The youth when an infant has been rescued from a burning
palace by the brave Chang-fi, who, wrapping the sleeping child in
his cloak and mounting a fleet charger, cut his way through the
enemy. On reaching a distant point the child was still asleep.
The witty annotator adds the remark, "He continued to sleep for
thirty years."

The minister to whom the boy had been confided, Chu-koh Liang,
is the most versatile and inventive genius of Chinese antiquity.
As the founder of the house of Chou discovered in an old fisherman a
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counsellor of state who paved his way to the throne, so Liu Pi
found this man in a humble cottage where he was hiding himself in
the garb of a peasant, _San Ku Mao Lu_, say the Chinese. He
"three times visited that thatched hovel" before he succeeded in
persuading its occupant to commit himself to his uncertain fortunes.
From that moment Chu-koh Liang served him as eyes and ears, teeth
and claws, with a skill and fidelity which have won the applause
of all succeeding ages. Among other things, he did for Liu Pi what
Archimedes did for Dionysius. He constructed military engines that
appeared so wonderful