“But you always put it last,” she urged.
“Assuredly,” I replied. “Being irrevocably born with the family name of Kong, it is thought more reasonable that that should stand first. After that, others are attached as the various contingencies demand it, as Ho upon participating in the month-age feast, the book-name of Tsin at a later period, Paik upon taking a degree, and so forth.”
“I am very sorry, Mr. Kong,” said the maiden, adding, with what at the time certainly struck this person as shallow-witted prejudice. “Of course it is really quite your own fault for being so tospy-turvily arranged in every way. But, to return to the subject, why should not one speak of one’s heart?”
“Because,” replied this person, colouring deeply, and scarcely able to control his unbearable offence that so irreproachably-moulded a creature should openly refer to the detail, “because it is a gross and unrefined particular, much more internal and much less pleasantly-outlined than those extremities whose spoken equivalent shall henceforth be an abandoned word from my lips.”
“But, in any case, it is not the actual organ that one infers,” protested the maiden. “As the seat of the affections, passions, virtues, and will, it is the conventional emblem of every thought and emotion.”
“By no means,” I cried, forgetting in the face of so heterodox an assertion that it would be well to walk warily at every point. “That is the stomach.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the maiden, burying her face in a gracefully-perfumed remnant of lace, to so overwhelming a degree that for the moment I feared she might become involved in the dizzy falling. “Never, by any mischance, use that word again in the society of the presentable, Mr. Kong.”
“The ceremonial usage of my own land of the Heavenly Dynasty is proverbially elaborate,” I said, with a gesture of self-abasement, “but in comparison with yours it may be regarded as an undeviating walk when opposed to a stately and many-figured dance. Among the company of the really excessively select (in which must ever be included the one whom I am now addressing), it becomes difficult for an outcast of my illimitable obtuseness to move to one side or the other without putting his foot into that.”
“Oh no,” exclaimed the maiden, in fragrant encouragement, “I think you are getting on very nicely, Mr. Kong, and one does not look for absolute conformance from a foreigner—especially one who is so extremely foreign. If I can help you with anything—of course I could not even speak as I have done to an ordinary stranger, but with one of a distant race it seems different—if I can tell you anything that will save you—”
“You are all-exalted,” I replied, with seemly humility, “and virtue and wisdom press out your temples on either side. Certainly, since I have learned that the heart is so poetically regarded, I have been assailed by a fear lest other organs which I have hitherto despised might be used in a similar way. Now, as regards liver—”