his
characters. The risks of the future, however, were too great to be run
with impunity; therefore it was arranged, by means of money--for this
person was fast becoming acquainted with the ways of Peking--that an
emissary from one who sat in an easy-chair should call upon him for a
conference, the narrative of which appeared in this form in the Peking
Printed Leaves of Thrice-distilled Truth:

The brilliant and amiable young picture-maker Kin Yen, in spite of
the immediate and universal success of his accomplished efforts,
is still quite rotund in intellect, nor is he, if we may use a
form of speaking affected by our friends across the Hoang Hai,
"suffering from swollen feet." A person with no recognized
position, but one who occasionally does inferior work of this
nature for us, recently surprised Kin Yen without warning, and
found him in his sumptuously appointed picture-room, busy with
compasses and tracing-paper. About the place were scattered in
elegant confusion several of his recent masterpieces. From the
subsequent conversation we are in a position to make it known that
in future this refined and versatile person will confine himself
entirely to illustrations of processions, funerals, armies on the
march, persons pursued by others, and kindred subjects which
appeal strongly to his imagination. Kin Yen has severe emotions on
the subject of individuality in art, and does not hesitate to
express himself forcibly with reference to those who are content
to degrade the names of their ancestors by turning out what he
wittily describes as "so much of varied mediocrity."

The prominence obtained by this pleasantly-composed notice--for it was
copied by others who were unaware of the circumstance of its origin--had
the desired effect. In future, when one of those who sit in easy-chairs
wished for a picture after the kind mentioned, he would say to his
lesser one: "Oh, send to the graceful and versatile Kin Yen; he becomes
inspired on the subject of funerals," or persons escaping from prison,
or families walking to the temple, or whatever it might be. In that way
this narrow-minded and illiterate person was soon both looked at and
rich, so that it was his daily practice to be carried, in silk garments,
past the houses of those who had known him in poverty, and on these
occasions he would puff out his cheeks and pull his moustaches, looking
fiercely from side to side.

True are the