the designation of this selected one, if instead
of the usual form of the country it was habitually set forth in the
following logical and thoroughly Chinese style:--Chamberlain Joseph,
Master, Mr., Thrice Wearer of the Robes and Golden Collar, One of the
Just Peacemakers, Esquire, Member of the House of Law-givers, Leader
in the Council of Commerce, Presider over the Tables of Provincial
Government, Uprightly Honourable Secretary of the Outlying Parts.

Among the notes which at various times I have inscribed in a book
for future guidance I find it written on an early page, "They do not
hesitate to express their fathers' names openly," but to this assertion
there stands a warning sign which was added after the following
incident. "Is it true, Mr. Kong," asked a lesser one, who is spoken of
as vastly rich but discontented with her previous lot, of this person
upon an occasion, "is it really true that your countrymen to not
consider it right to speak of their fathers' names, even in this
enlightened age?" To this I replied that the matter was as she had
eloquently expressed it, and, encouraged by her amiable condescension,
I asked after the memory of her paternal grandsire, whose name I had
frequently heard whispered in connection with her own. To my inelegant
confusion she regarded me for a period as though I had the virtue of
having become transparent, and then passed on in a most overwhelming
excess of disconcertingly-arranged silence.

"You've done it now, Kong," said one who stood by (or, as we would
express the same thought, "You have succeeded in accomplishing the
undesirable"); "don't you know that the old man was in the tripe and
trotter line?"

"To no degree," I replied truly. "Yet," I continued, matching his idiom
with another equally facile, "wherein was this person's screw loose? Are
they not openly referred to--those of the Line of Tripe and Trotter--by
their descendants?"

"Not in most cases," he said, with a concentration that indicated
a lurking sting among his words. "Generally speaking, they aren't
mentioned or taken into any account whatever. While they are alive they
are kept in the background and invited to treat themselves to the Tower
when nice people are expected; when dead they are fastened up in the
family back cupboard by a score of ten-inch nails and three-trick Yale
locks, so to speak. And in the meantime all the splash is being made on
their muddy oof. See?"

I nodded agreeably, thoug