le instances. These calumnies they have not hesitated to
commit to the form of printed books, which, falling into the hands
of the ignorant and undiscriminating, may even suggest to their
ill-balanced minds a doubt whether we of the Celestial Empire really are
the wisest, bravest, purest, and most enlightened people in existence.

As a parting, it only remains to be said that, in order to maintain
unimpaired the quaint-sounding brevity and archaic construction of your
prepossessing language, I have engraved most of the remarks upon the
receptive tablets of my mind as they were uttered. To one who can repeat
the Five Classics without stumbling this is a contemptible achievement.
Let it be an imposed obligation, therefore, that you retain these
portions unchanged as a test and a proof to all who may read. Of my
own deficient words, I can only in truest courtesy maintain that any
alteration must of necessity make them less offensively commonplace than
at present they are.

The Sign and immutable Thumb-mark of, Kong Ho

By a sure hand to the House of one Ernest Bramah.

THE MIRROR OF KONG HO

LETTER I

Concerning the journey. The unlawful demons invoked by
certain of the barbarians; their power and the manner of
their suppression. Suppression. The incredible obtuseness of
those who attend within tea-houses. The harmonious attitude
of a person of commerce.

VENERATED SIRE (at whose virtuous and well-established feet an unworthy
son now prostrates himself in spirit repeatedly),--

Having at length reached the summit of my journey, that London of which
the merchants from Canton spoke so many strange and incredible things, I
now send you filial salutations three times increased, and in accordance
with your explicit command I shall write all things to you with an
unvarnished brush, well assured that your versatile object in committing
me to so questionable an enterprise was, above all, to learn the
truth of these matters in an undeviating and yet open-headed spirit of
accuracy and toleration.

Of the perils incurred while travelling in the awe-inspiring devices by
which I was transferred from shore to shore and yet further inland,
of the utter absence of all leisurely dignity on the part of
those controlling their movements, and of the almost unnatural
self-opinionatedness which led them to persist in starting at a stated
and prearranged time, even when this person had courteously pointed
out to