he still adorable
Tien. Retiring to a distance from it, he opened the accompanying letter
and read:

"When a virtuous maiden has been made the victim of a heartless jest or
a piece of coarse stupidity at a person's hands, it is no uncommon thing
for him to be struck blind on meeting her father. Therefore, if the
degraded and evil-minded Kin Yen values his eyes, ears, nose, pigtail,
even his dishonourable breath, let him hide himself behind a fortified
wall at Pe-li-Chen's approach.

"With this Tien returns everything she has ever accepted from Kin Yen.
She even includes the brace of puppies which she received anonymously
about a month ago, and which she did not eat, but kept for reasons of
her own--reasons entirely unconnected with the vapid and exceedingly
conceited Kin Yen."

As though this letter, and the puppies of which this person now heard
for the first time, making him aware of the existence of a rival lover,
were not enough, there almost immediately arrived a letter from Tien's
father:

"This person has taken the advice of those skilled in extorting money by
means of law forms, and he finds that Kin Yen has been guilty of a grave
and highly expensive act. This is increased by the fact that Tien had
conveyed his seemingly distinguished intentions to all her friends,
before whom she now stands in an exceedingly ungraceful attitude. The
machinery for depriving Kin Yen of all the necessaries of existence
shall be put into operation at once."

At this point, the person who is now concluding his obscure and
commonplace history, having spent his last piece of money on joss-sticks
and incense-paper, and being convinced of the presence of the spirits of
his ancestors, is inspired to make the following prophecies: That Tieng
Lin, who imposed upon him in the matter of picture-making, shall come
to a sudden end, accompanied by great internal pains, after suffering
extreme poverty; that the one who sits in an easy-chair, together with
his lesser one and all who make stories for them, shall, while sailing
to a rice feast during the Festival of Flowers, be precipitated into the
water and slowly devoured by sea monsters, Klan-hi in particular being
tortured in the process; that Pel-li-Chen, the father of Tien, shall
be seized with the dancing sickness when in the presence of the august
Emperor, and being in consequence suspected of treachery, shall, to
prove the truth of his denials, be submitted to the tests of boiling