“After sacrifice at the palace he would not keep the meat over-night; at home, not more than three days.  If kept longer, it was not eaten.  He did not talk at meals, nor in bed.  Though there were but coarse rice and vegetables, he made his offering with all reverence.  If his mat were not straight, he would not sit down.  When drinking with the villagers, when those with slaves left, he left too.  At the village exorcisms he donned court dress, and stood on the eastern steps.

“When sending inquiries to another land, he bowed twice and saw his messenger out.  On K’ang’s making him a present of medicine, he accepted it with a low bow, saying:  ’I do not know; I dare not taste it.’  His stables having been burnt, the Master, on his return from court, said:  ‘Is anyone hurt?’ He did not ask after the horses.”

Set down in perfect good faith to imply that his concern was for the sufferings of others, not for his personal loss:  and without perception of the fact that it might imply callousness as to the suffering of the horses.  We are to read the recorder’s mind, and not the Master’s, in that omission.—­

“When the marquis sent him baked meat, he set his mat straight, and tasted it first.  When the Marquis sent him raw meat, he had it cooked for sacrifice.  When the Marquis sent him a living beast, he had it reared.  When dining in attendance on the Marquis, the latter made the offering; Confucius ate of things first.  On the Marquis coming to see him in sickness, he turned his face to the east and had his court dress spread across him, with the girdle over it.  When summoned by the Marquis, he walked, without waiting for his carriage.  On entering the Great Temple, he asked how each thing was done.  When a friend died who had no home, he said:  ‘It is for me to bury him.’  When a friend sent a gift, even of a carriage and horses, he did not bow.  He only bowed for sacrificial meat.  He would not lie in a bed like a corpse.  At home he unbent.

“On meeting a mourner, were he a friend, his face changed.  Even in every-day clothes, when he met anyone in full dress, or a blind man, his face grew staid.  When he met men in mourning, he bowed over the cross-bar.  Before choice meats he rose with a changed look.  At sharp thunder or fierce wind, his countenance changed.  In mounting his chariot he stood straight and grasped the cord.  When in his chariot, he did not look round, speak fast, or point.”

There you have one side of the outer man; and the most has been made of it.  “Always figuring, always posturing,” we hear.  I merely point to the seventy noble generations, the personality made up of that courtly heredity, whose smallest quite spontaneous acts and habits seemed to men worth recording, as showing how the perfect gentleman behaved:  a model.  Another side is found in the lover of poetry, the devotee of music, the man of keen and intense affections.  Surely, if a poseur,