should be forth-coming—­ could hardly go unnoticed.  With a band of disciples he followed his marquis into Ts’i:  it is in Chihli, north of Lu, and was famous then for its national music.  On the journey he heard Ts’i airs sung, and ‘hurried forward.’  One of the first things he did on arriving at the capital was to attend a concert (or something equivalent); and for three months thereafter, as a sign of thanksgiving, he ate no flesh.  “I never dreamed,” said he, “that music could be so wonderful.”

The fame of his Raja-Yoga School (that was what it was) had gone abroad, and Duke Ching of Ts’i received him well;—­offered him a city with its revenues; but the offer was declined.  The Duke was impressed; half inclined to turn Confucianist; wished to retain him with a pension, to have him on hand in case of need;—­ but withal he was of doubtful hesitating mind about it, and allowed his prime minister to dissuade him.  “These scholars,” said the latter, “are impractical, and cannot be imitated.  They are haughty and self-opinionated, and will never rest content with an inferior position.  Confucius has a thousand peculiarities";—­this is the gluttonous-man-and-winebibber saying, which the missionary interpreters have been echoing since;—­“it would take ages to exhaust all he knows about the ceremonies of going up and down.  This is not the time to examine into his rules of propriety; your people would say you were neglecting them.”—­When next Duke Ching was urged to follow Confucius, he answered:  “I am too old to adopt his doctrines.”  The Master returned to Lu; lectured to his pupils, compiled the Books of Odes and of History; and waited for the disorders to pass.

Which in time they did, more or less.  Marquis Ting came to the throne, and made him chief magistrate of the town of Chungtu.

Now was the time to prove his theories, and show whether he was the Man to the core, that he had been so assiduously showing himself, you may say, on the rind.  Ah ha! now surely, with hard work before him, this scholar, theorist, conventional formalist, ritualist, and what else you may like to call him, will be put to shame,—­shown up empty and foolish before the hard-headed men of action of his age.  Who, indeed,—­the hard-headed men of action—­ have succeeded in doing precisely nothing but to make confusion worse confounded; how much less, then, will this Impractical One do!  Let us watch him, and have our laugh...—­On the wrong side of your faces then; for lo now, miracles are happening!  He takes control; and here at last is one city in great Chu Hia where crime has ceased to be.  How does he manage it?  The miracle looks but the more miraculous as you watch.  He frames rules for everything; insists on the proprieties; morning, noon, and night holds up an example, and, says he, relies on the power of that.—­Example?  Tush, he must be beheading right and left!—­Nothing of the sort; he is all against capital punishment,