w:
black tyrannies of dogmatism, burnings of heretics wholesale.
But when the Crest-Wave Egos were in China, that larger freedom
of hers enabled her, among other things, to achieve the highest
heights in art: the Yellow Crane was at her disposal, and she
failed not to mount the heavens; she had the glimpses Wordsworth
pined for; she was not left forlorn. This merely for another
blow at that worst superstition of all: Unbrotherliness, and our
doctrine of Superior Racehood.--Many of the tales are mere
thaumatolatry: as of the man who took out his bones and washed
them once every thousand years; or of the man who would fill his
mouth with rice-grains, let them forth as a swarm of bees to
gather honey in the valley,--then readmit them into his mouth as
to a hive, where they became rice again,--presumably "sweetened
to taste." But in others there seems to be a core of symbolism
and recognition of the fundamental things. There was a man
once,--the tale is in Giles's Dictionary of Chinese Biography,
but I forget his name--who sought out the Sennin Ho Kwang (his
name might have been Ho Kwang); and found him at last in a
gourd-flask, whither he was used to retire for the night. In
this retreat Ho Kwang invited our man to join him; and he was
enabled to do so; and found it, once he had got in, a fair and
spacious palace enough. Three days he remained there learning;
while fifteen years were passing in China without. Then Ho Kwang
gave him a rod, and a spell to say over it; and bade him go his
ways. He would lay the rod on the ground, stand astride of it,
and speak the spell; and straight it became a dragon for him to
mount and ride the heavens where he would. Thenceforth for many
years he was a kind of Guardian Spirit over China: appearing
suddenly wherever there was distress or need of help: at dawn in
mountain Chungnan by Changan town in the north; at noon, maybe,
by the southern sea; at dusk he might be seen a-dragon-back
above the sea-mists rolling in over Yangtse;--and all in the same
day. But at last, they say, he forgot the spell, and found
himself riding the clouds on a mere willow wand;--and the wand
behaving as though Newton had already watched that aggravating
apple;--and himself, in due course dashed to pieces on the earth
below.--There is some fine symbolism here; the makings of
a good story.

And now we come to 197, "the year in which (to quote our
tabulation above) the main or original Han Cycle sh