sale, the bowl composed of the finest red clay,
delicately baked and fashioned, the long bamboo stem smoother than the
sacred tooth of the divine Buddha, the spreading support patiently and
cunningly carved with scenes representing the Seven Joys, and the Tenth
Hell of unbelievers."

"Ah!" exclaimed Wang Yu eagerly, "it is indeed as you say, a Mandarin
among masterpieces. That pipe, O most unobserving Kai Lung, is the work
of this retiring and superficial person who is now addressing you, and,
though the fact evidently escaped your all-seeing glance, the place
where it is exposed is none other than his shop of 'The Fountain of
Beauty,' which you have on many occasions endowed with your honourable
presence."

"Doubtless the carving is the work of the accomplished Wang Yu, and the
fitting together," replied Kai Lung; "but the materials for so refined
and ornamental a production must of necessity have been brought many
thousand li; the clay perhaps from the renowned beds of Honan, the wood
from Peking, and the bamboo from one of the great forests of the North."

"For what reason?" said Wang Yu proudly. "At this person's very door
is a pit of red clay, purer and infinitely more regular than any to
be found at Honan; the hard wood of Wu-whei is extolled among carvers
throughout the Empire, while no bamboo is straighter or more smooth than
that which grows in the neighbouring woods."

"O most inconsistent Wang Yu!" cried the story-teller, "assuredly a very
commendable local pride has dimmed your usually penetrating eyesight.
Is not the clay pit of which you speak that in which you fashioned
exceedingly unsymmetrical imitations of rat-pies in your childhood? How,
then, can it be equal to those of Honan, which you have never seen?
In the dark glades of these woods have you not chased the gorgeous
butterfly, and, in later years, the no less gaily attired maidens of
Wu-whei in the entrancing game of Kiss in the Circle? Have not the
bamboo-trees to which you have referred provided you with the ideal
material wherewith to roof over those cunningly-constructed pits into
which it has ever been the chief delight of the young and audacious to
lure dignified and unnaturally stout Mandarins? All these things you
have seen and used ever since your mother made a successful offering to
the Goddess Kum-Fa. How, then, can they be even equal to the products of
remote Honan and fabulous Peking? Assuredly the generally veracious Wang
Yu spea