"Have already thrice been narrated within Wu-whei by the versatile but
exceedingly uninventive Kai Lung," remarked Wang Yu placidly. "Indeed,
has there not come to be a saying by which an exceptionally frugal
host's rice, having undoubtedly seen the inside of the pot many times,
is now known in this town as Kai-Pel?"

"Alas!" exclaimed Kai Lung, "well was this person warned of Wu-whei
in the previous village, as a place of desolation and excessively
bad taste, whose inhabitants, led by an evil-minded maker of very
commonplace pipes, named Wang Yu, are unable to discriminate in all
matters not connected with the cooking of food and the evasion of just
debts. They at Shan Tzu hung on to my cloak as I strove to leave them,
praying that I would again entrance their ears with what they termed the
melodious word-music of this person's inimitable version of the inspired
story of Yuin-Pel."

"Truly the story of Yuin-Pel is in itself excellent," interposed the
conciliatory Hi Seng; "and Kai Lung's accomplishment of having three
times repeated it here without deviating in the particular of a single
word from the first recital stamps him as a story-teller of no ordinary
degree. Yet the saying 'Although it is desirable to lose persistently
when playing at squares and circles with the broad-minded and sagacious
Emperor, it is none the less a fact that the observance of this
etiquette deprives the intellectual diversion of much of its interest
for both players,' is no less true today than when the all knowing H'sou
uttered it."

"They well said--they of Shan Tzu--that the people of Wu-whei were
intolerably ignorant and of low descent," continued Kai Lung, without
heeding the interruption; "that although invariably of a timorous
nature, even to the extent of retiring to the woods on the approach of
those who select bowmen for the Imperial army, all they require in a
story is that it shall be garnished with deeds of bloodshed and violence
to the exclusion of the higher qualities of well-imagined metaphors and
literary style which alone constitute true excellence."

"Yet it has been said," suggested Hi Seng, "that the inimitable Kai
Lung can so mould a narrative in the telling that all the emotions
are conveyed therein without unduly disturbing the intellects of the
hearers."

"O amiable Hi Seng," replied Kai Lung with extreme affability,
"doubtless you are the most expert of water-carriers, and on a hot
and dusty day, when the