all that is intellectual and competitive within one? Can it be that the
immaculate Kin Yen is unacquainted with the subtle distinction between
the really select and the vastly ordinary? Ah, undiscriminating Kin Yen!
are not the eyelashes of the person who is addressing you as threads
of fine gold to junk's cables when compared with those of the extremely
commonplace female who is here pictured in the art of carrying a bucket?
Can the most refined lack of vanity hide from you the fact that your own
person is infinitely rounder than this of the evilly-intentioned-looking
individual with the opium pipe? O blind Kin Yen!"

Here she fled in honourable confusion, leaving this person standing in
the street, astounded, and a prey to the most distinguished emotions of
a complicated nature.

"Oh, Tien," he cried at length, "inspired by those bright eyes, narrower
than the most select of the three thousand and one possessed by the
sublime Buddha, the almost fallen Kin Yen will yet prove himself worthy
of your esteemed consideration. He will, without delay, learn to draw
two new living persons, and will incorporate in them the likenesses
which you have suggested."

Returning swiftly to his abode, he therefore inscribed and despatched
this letter, in proof of his resolve:

"To the Heaven-sent human chrysanthemum, in whose body reside the
Celestial Principles and the imprisoned colours of the rainbow.

"From the very offensive and self-opinionated picture-maker.

"Henceforth this person will take no rest, nor eat any but the commonest
food, until he shall have carried out the wishes of his one Jade Star,
she whose teeth he is not worthy to blacken.

"When Kin Yen has been entrusted with a story which contains a being in
some degree reflecting the character of Tien, he will embellish it with
her irreproachable profile and come to hear her words. Till then he bids
her farewell."

From that moment most of this person's time was necessarily spent in
learning to draw the two new characters, and in consequence of this he
lost much work, and, indeed, the greater part of the connexion which
he had been at such pains to form gradually slipped away from him. Many
months passed before he was competent to reproduce persons resembling
Tien and himself, for in this he was unassisted by Tieng Lin, and his
progress was slow.

At length, being satisfied, he called upon the least fierce of those
who sit in easy-chairs, and requested that he