The Dream
When he had tasted in a dream of the Ten Courts of Purgatory, Doctor Tsêng was humbled in spirit, and passed his life in piety among the foot-hills.
Fêng-Shui
At the Hour of the Horse avoid raising a roof-tree,
for by the trampling of his hoofs it may
be beaten down;
And at the Hour of the cunning Rat go not near a
soothsayer, for by his cunning he may mislead
the oracle, and the hopes of the enquirer come
to naught.
China of the Tourists
Reflections in a Ricksha
This ricksha is more comfortable than some.
The springs are not broken, and the seat is covered
with a white cloth.
Also the runner is young and sturdy, and his legs flash
pleasantly.
I am not ill at ease.
The runner interests me.
Between the shafts he trots easily and familiarly, lifting
his knees prettily and holding his shoulders
steady.
His hips are lean and narrow as a filly's; his calves
might have posed for Praxiteles.
He is a modern, I perceive, for he wears no queue.
Above a rounded neck rises a shock of hair the shade
of dusty coal. Each hair is stiff and erect as a
brush bristle. There are lice in them no doubt—
but then perhaps we of the West are too squeamish
in details of this minor sort.
What interests me chiefly is the back of his ears. Not
that they are extraordinary as ears; it is their
very normality that touches me. I find them
smaller than those of a horse, but undoubtedly
near of kin.
There is no denying the truth of evolution;
Yet as a beast of burden man is distinctly inferior.
It is odd.
At home I am a democrat. A republic, a true republic,
seems not improbable, a fighting dream.
Yet beholding the back of the ears of a trotting man
I perceive it to be impossible—the millennium
another million years away.
I grow insufferably superior and Anglo-Saxon.
I am sorry, but what would you?
One is what one is.