The brilliant and amiable young picture-maker Kin Yen, in spite of the immediate and universal success of his accomplished efforts, is still quite rotund in intellect, nor is he, if we may use a form of speaking affected by our friends across the Hoang Hai, “suffering from swollen feet.”  A person with no recognized position, but one who occasionally does inferior work of this nature for us, recently surprised Kin Yen without warning, and found him in his sumptuously appointed picture-room, busy with compasses and tracing-paper.  About the place were scattered in elegant confusion several of his recent masterpieces.  From the subsequent conversation we are in a position to make it known that in future this refined and versatile person will confine himself entirely to illustrations of processions, funerals, armies on the march, persons pursued by others, and kindred subjects which appeal strongly to his imagination.  Kin Yen has severe emotions on the subject of individuality in art, and does not hesitate to express himself forcibly with reference to those who are content to degrade the names of their ancestors by turning out what he wittily describes as “so much of varied mediocrity.”

The prominence obtained by this pleasantly-composed notice—­for it was copied by others who were unaware of the circumstance of its origin—­had the desired effect.  In future, when one of those who sit in easy-chairs wished for a picture after the kind mentioned, he would say to his lesser one:  “Oh, send to the graceful and versatile Kin Yen; he becomes inspired on the subject of funerals,” or persons escaping from prison, or families walking to the temple, or whatever it might be.  In that way this narrow-minded and illiterate person was soon both looked at and rich, so that it was his daily practice to be carried, in silk garments, past the houses of those who had known him in poverty, and on these occasions he would puff out his cheeks and pull his moustaches, looking fiercely from side to side.

True are the words written in the elegant and distinguished Book of Verses:  “Beware lest when being kissed by the all-seeing Emperor, you step upon the elusive banana-peel.”  It was at the height of eminence in this altogether degraded person’s career that he encountered the being who led him on to his present altogether too lamentable condition.

Tien Nung is the earthly name by which is known she who combines all the most illustrious attributes which have been possessed of women since the days of the divine Fou-Hy.  Her father is a person of very gross habits, and lives by selling inferior merchandise covered with some of good quality.  Upon past occasions, when under the direct influence of Tien, and in the hope of gaining some money benefit, this person may have spoken of him in terms of praise, and may even have recommended friends to entrust articles of value to him, or to procure goods on his advice.  Now, however, he records it as his unalterable decision that the father of Tien Nung is by profession a person who obtains goods by stratagem, and that, moreover, it is impossible to gain an advantage over him on matters of exchange.