The child's eyes sparkled as he turned to some of those illustrating children at play, and as he constructed one which represents two children swinging their arms and running, he repeated:
See the children at their play,
Gathering flowers by the way.
"They are gathering pussy-willows," he added.
In another he represented a child standing before the front gate, where he had knocked in vain to gain admission. As he completed it he said, pointing to the apricot over the door:
Ten times he knocked upon the gate,
But nine, they opened not,
Above the wall he plainly saw,
A ripe, red apricot.
He continued to represent quotations from the poets and explain them as he went along.
There was one which indicated that some one was ascending the steps to the jade platform on which the dust had settled as it does on everything in Peking; at the same time the verse told us that
Step by step we reach the platform,
All of jade of purest green,
Call a child to come and sweep it,
But he cannot sweep it clean.
"You know," he went on, "the cottages of many of the poets were near the beautiful lakes in central China, in the wild heights of the mountains, or upon the banks of some flowing stream. In this one the pavilion of the poet is on the bank of the river, and we are told that,
In his cottage sat the poet
Thinking, as the moon went by,
That the moonlight on the water,
Made the water like the sky."