though on account of my
contemptible deficiencies of style much may seem improbable to your
all-knowing mind), these things I write with an unbending brush; for
I set down only that which I have myself seen, or read in their own
printed records. Doubtless it will occur to one of your preternatural
intelligence that our own system of administering justice, whereby the
person who can hire the greater number of witnesses is reasonably held
to be in the right, although perhaps not absolutely infallible, is in
every way more convenient; but, as it is well said, "To the blind, night
is as acceptable as day."

Henceforth you will have no hesitation in letting it be known throughout
Yuen-ping that these foreign barbarians do possess secret demons, in
spite of their denials. Doubtless I shall presently discover others no
less powerful.

With honourable distinction this person has at length grasped the
essential details of the spoken language here--not sufficiently well,
indeed, to make himself understood on most occasions, or even to
understand others, but enough to perceive clearly when he fails to
become intelligible or when they experience a like difficulty with him.
Upon an earlier occasion, before he had made so much progress, being one
day left to his own resources, and feeling an internal lack, he entered
what appeared to be a tea-shop of reputable demeanour, and, seating
himself at one of the little marble tables, he freely pronounced the
carefully-learned word "rice" to the attending nymph. To put aside all
details of preparation (into which, indeed, this person could not
enter) he waved his hand gracefully, at the same time smiling with an
expression of tolerant acquiescence, as of one who would say that what
was good enough to be cooked and offered by so entrancing a maiden
was good enough to be eaten by him. After remaining in unruffled
tranquillity for the full portion of an hour, and observing that no
other person around had to wait above half that period, this one began
to perceive that the enterprise was not likely to terminate in a
manner satisfactory to himself; so that, leaving this place with a few
well-chosen phrases of intolerable regret in his own tongue, he entered
another, and conducted himself in a like fashion.... Towards evening,
with an unperturbed exterior, but materially afflicted elsewhere, this
person seated himself within the eleventh tea-shop, and, pointing first
towards his own constituents