Better fifty years of Europe
Than a Cycle of Cathay,—
—as turtle-doves, you know. Still, that chuckling and cavorting American fowl, that two-headed and vulturine Russo-Polish Eagle, do not quite fit into the Mongolian Arcadia of the Willow-pattern plate; now do they? We have fallen, lily of my life, upon sordid, and subversive, and sceptical times, when millions of taels move our Mandarins to Modernism, when Silver Rings and Syndicates, can set up a Party of Progress in the Realm of the Immutable, and when doubts have been thrown by shallow scribes upon the existence of the Great Wall of China itself!
Li-Chi (shuddering). Dreadful, dear! Let's turn back into turtle-doves at once, and coo ourselves into truly Celestial obliviousness of this colossal Yankee coup, which threatens—perchance prematurely—to fix for all time this preposterously Western and barbaric picture as the Willow Pattern of the Future! [They do so.
SAGACITY.
Countryman. "Fi' Pounds too much for him? He's a won'erful good Sportin' Daug, Sir! Why he come to a Dead Pint in the Street, Sir, close ag'in a ol' Gen'leman, the other day—'Fust o' September it was, Sir!—an' the Gen'leman told me arterwards as his Name were 'Partridge'!"
Customer. "You don't say so!" [Bargain struck!