SOURCE: "The Wallet of Kai-Lung," in Life and Letters, George H. Doran Company, 1921, pp. 44-51.

In the following essay, Squire favorably assesses the Chinese stories of The Wallet of Kai Lung.

Everybody knows about Mr. Thomas Hardy, Shakespeare, Lord Byron and Lord Tennyson. This does not detract from one's enjoyment of their works; but there is a peculiar and intense delight in good books which are not commonly known. English literature is sprinkled with them, and one's own favourites of the kind one talks about with a peculiar enthusiasm. For myself I continually urge people to read Trelawney's Adventures of a Younger Son and Coryat's Crudities, which, famous enough in the auction room, is seldom enough talked about outside it. The present age, like other ages, produces these books that are less celebrated than they ought to be, and one of them is Mr. Ernest Bramah's The Wallet...