t to produce a
particular effect of humour by the use of a foreign convention, the
Chinese convention, in the English tongue. It was meant to produce a
certain effect of philosophy and at the same time it was meant to
produce a certain completed interest of fiction, of relation, of a
short epic. It did all these things.

It is one of the tests of excellent work that such work is economic,
that is, that there is nothing redundant in order or in vocabulary,
and at the same time nothing elliptic--in the full sense of that word:
that is, no sentence in which so much is omitted that the reader is
left puzzled. That is the quality you get in really good statuary--in
Houdon, for instance, or in that triumph the archaic _Archer_ in the
Louvre. _The Wallet of Kai Lung_ satisfied all these conditions.

I do not know how often I have read it since I first possessed it. I
know how many copies there are in my house--just over a dozen. I know
with what care I have bound it constantly for presentation to friends.
I have been asked for an introduction to this its successor, _Kai
Lung's Golden Hours_. It is worthy of its forerunner. There is the
same plan, exactitude, working-out and achievement; and therefore the
same complete satisfaction in the reading, or to be more accurate, in
the incorporation of the work with oneself.

All this is not extravagant praise, nor even praise at all in the
conventional sense of that term. It is merely a judgment: a putting
into as carefully exact words as I can find the appreciation I make of
this style and its triumph.

The reviewer in his art must quote passages. It is hardly the part of
a Preface writer to do that. But to show what I mean I can at least
quote the following:

"Your insight is clear and unbiased," said the gracious
Sovereign. "But however entrancing it is to wander unchecked
through a garden of bright images, are we not enticing your
mind from another subject of almost equal importance?"

Or again:

"It has been said," he began at length, withdrawing his eyes
reluctantly from an usually large insect upon the ceiling and
addressing himself to the maiden, "that there are few
situations in life that cannot be honourably settled, and
without any loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold, or
by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a
precipice on a dark night."

Or again:

"After secretly observing the unstudied