not hook,
snare, or shoot the Dragon. "I do not know whose son Tao is,"
says Laotse. "It might appear to have been before God."

So I adhere to the tale of the old man in the Royal Library,
holding wonderful quiet conversations there; that "it might
appear to have been before God" is enough to convince me. There
was a man once*--I forget his name, but we may call him Cho Kung
for our purposes; he was of affable demeanor, and an excellent
flautist; and had an enormous disbelief in ghosts, bogies,
goblins, and 'supernatural' beings of every kind. It seized
him with the force of a narrow creed; and he went forth to
missionarize, seeking disputants. He found one in the chief
Librarian of some provincial library; who confessed to a
credulousness along that line, and seemed willing to talk. Here
then were grand opportunities--for a day's real enjoyment, with
perchance a creditable convert to be won at the end of it.
Behold them sitting down to the fray, in the shadows among the
books: the young Cho Kung, affable (I like the word well),
voluble and earnest; the old Librarian, mild, with little to say
but _buts_ and _ifs,_ and courteous even beyond the wont in that
"last refuge of good manners," China. All day long they sat; and
affable Cho, like Sir Macklin in the poem,

"Argued high and argued low,
And likewise argued round about him";

--until by fall of dusk the Librarian was fairly beaten. So
cogent were Cho's arguments, so loud and warm his eloquence,
so entirely convincing his facts adduced--his modern instances,
as you may say--that there really was nothing for the old
man to answer. Ghosts were not; genii were ridiculously
unthinkable; supernatural beings could not exist, and it
was absurd to think they could. The Librarian had not a
leg to stand on; that was flat. Accordingly he rose to
his feet--and bowed.--"Sir," said he, with all prescribed
honorifics, "undoubtedly you are victorious. The contemptible
present speaker sees the error of his miserable ways. He
is convinced. It remains for him only to add"--and here
something occurred to make Cho rub his eyes--"that he is
himself a supernatural being."--And with that his form and
limbs distend, grow misty--and he vanishes in a cloud up through
the ceiling.--You see, those old librarians in China had a way of
doing things which was all their own.

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* The story is told in Dr. H. H. Giles' _Dictionary of Chinese
Biography._
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