For, when the bridegrooms disapprove what they do,
They teach them manners with the bastinado.
Near Te-pott’s palace lived an old Chinese—
About as poor a man as could be known
In lands where guardians leave them to their ease,
Nor pen the poor up in bastilles of stone:
He got a livelihood by picking teas;
And of possessions worldly had but one—
But one—the which, the reader must be told,
Was a fair daughter seventeen years old.