This duty discharged, Lí attacked the dainties before him like a hungry soldier, yet seasoning all he said and did with so much wit and humor, that the guests laid down their chop-sticks and listened with wonder. With the wine, Li grew still more merry—his wit cut like hail-stones wheresoe’er it lighted, and at his jovial songs the grave dignitaries forgetting their rank, (somewhat washed away by copious draughts of sam-shu,[[1]]) snapped their fingers, wagged their shorn heads, and even rising from the table embraced him familiarly. At length, when after an interval of a few hours their hilarity was somewhat abated, during which the guests walked in the beautiful gardens, or reclining upon luxuriant cushions, regaled themselves with their pipes, or in masticating their favorite betel-nut, Lí made bare his bosom before them, and to their astonishment they found it was only a needy scholar whose praises they had been shouting.
A needy scholar!
How firmly they clutched their fobs, lest a candareen[[2]] might jump into the pocket of the needy scholar. But of advice they were as profuse as grass-hoppers in August.
“Go to the capital—go to Kiang-fu,” (Nankin the ancient capital of the empire,) “thou wilt perplex the learned—thou wilt bewilder the ignorant!” said one.
“Hi! this fellow Lí will yet stand with honor before the emperor,” cried another.
“Appear boldly in the ‘Scientific Halls’ before the Examiners,” said a third, “and never fear but thy name shall be cried at midnight from the highest tower in the city,[[3]] as the successful Lí, with whom no other candidate can compete!”
“When the wind blows over the fields does not the grass bend before it!” said Hok-wan. “When the great Ho speaks will not inferiors obey! the learned academician Ho is my brother—to him then you shall go—one word from him, and even the judges themselves shall cry your name.”
“Ivory does not come from a rat’s mouth, or gold from brass clippings,” thought Lí, as he listened to these remarks—“a few candareens now would be better for me than all this fine talk—truly I must be a fool not to know all this stuff before. Yet by the sacred manes of my ancestors, I will go to the capital, and that, too, ere another sun ripens the rice-fields—furnished with a letter to the illustrious Ho, I may dare admittance.”
Giddy with wine, and with the excitement of high hopes for the future, at a late hour Lí was borne in a sumptuous palankeen to the humble dwelling of Whanki.
The poor old soul at first knew not the gay gallant who stood before her, so much had the gift-robes of the mandarin changed his appearance.