Li-Chi. Papa was impetuous. Our—our elopement angered him. But Telegraph-poles, Telephone Exchanges, River Steamers, Banks and Blazing Posters!!—Alas!!!
Chang (hotly). By the isolated button of Celestial supereminence, it is too bad! What can Li Hung Chang, that dragon-claw of the throne, that amber-souled prop of imperial perpendicularity be about, I wonder?
Li-Chi (meditatively). We—e—ell,—perhaps he knows, after all.
Chang. What meaneth the tintinnabulant tea-blossom of my trivial and ephemeral personality?
Li-Chi (archly). The "Heathen Chinee," as the wanton Western scribe insolently calls him, is indeed "peculiar," as perchance even Count Eugene Stanislow Kostka de Mitkiewicz and Mr. Jay-Gould, Hood, Mackay the multi-millionnaire, and Barker Brothers the Bankers, New York Syndicates and Philadelphian Silver Rings, may yet discover as clearly and completely as did Bill Nye and Truthful James of the ribald ballad.
Chang (admiringly). Verily even the orbicular contractility of dexter-optical semi-closure becometh those almond eyes, oh! flesh-enshrined opium-ecstasy of my most transcendental inwardness.
Li-Chi (smartly). I should think it did, indeed! A wink is as good as a nod to a blind lover. "Melican Man" is very 'cute and enterprising; but whether he'll find it quite so easy as he fancies to "run" the Celestial Kingdom, or "exploit" the Flowery Land, remains as the never-sufficiently-to-be-commended-and-left-carefully-unread Kung-foo-tze would say, "to be duskily adumbrated in the spirit-speculum of the yet To-be."
Chang. Quite so. Still, O million-berried mulberry-tree of my mean and inconsiderable soul-garden, to have our own secular love-legend and its many-centuried Scene thus sordidly transmogrified, cannot, O, shining one of my spirit's crepuscular gloom. O, beneficent betel-nut of my supersensual Palate"—
Li-Chi. Well, Chang, after all, novelty hath its charm—after a cycle or two, you know. Marquis Tseng talks about "the awakening of China." As if there was ever a Celestial who, for all his childlikeness and blandness, was not very wide-awake indeed! Why, Li-Chi, if ever we had our time over again, do you think that transmutation into a pair of turtle-doves,—bird-beatitudes, my Chang, are so limited!—would form the acme of our mutual aspirations?
Chang. Well, per—haps not, Li-Chi.