第59章

"You've done it now, Kong," said one who stood by (or, as we would express the same thought, "You have succeeded in accomplishing the undesirable"); "don't you know that the old man was in the tripe and trotter line?""To no degree," I replied truly."Yet," I continued, matching his idiom with another equally facile, "wherein was this person's screw loose? Are they not openly referred to--those of the Line of Tripe and Trotter--by their descendants?""Not in most cases," he said, with a concentration that indicated a lurking sting among his words."Generally speaking, they aren't mentioned or taken into any account whatever.While they are alive they are kept in the background and invited to treat themselves to the Tower when nice people are expected; when dead they are fastened up in the family back cupboard by a score of ten-inch nails and three-trick Yale locks, so to speak.And in the meantime all the splash is being made on their muddy oof.See?"I nodded agreeably, though, had the opportunity been more favourable, I would have made the feint to learn somewhat more of this secret practice of burying in the enclosed space beneath the stairs.Thus is it set forth why, after the statement, "They do not hesitate to express their fathers' names openly," it is further written, "Walk slowly! Engrave well upon your discreet remembrance the unmentionable Line of Tripe and Trotter."Another point of comparison which the superficial have failed to record is to be found in the frequent encouragements to regard The Virtues which are to be seen, like our own Confucian extracts, freely inscribed on every wall and suitable place about the city.These for the most part counsel moderation in taking false oaths, in stepping heedlessly upon the unknown ground, in following paths which lead to doubtful ends, and other timely warnings."Beware a smoke-breathing demon," is frequently cast across one's path upon a barrier, and this person has never failed to accept the omen and to retrace his steps hastily without looking to the right or the left.Even our own national caution is not forgotten, although to conform to barbarian indolence it is written, "Slowly, slowly; drive slowly." "Keep to the Right" (or, "Abandon that which is evil," as the analogy holds,) is perhaps the most frequently displayed of all, and doubtless many charitable persons obtain an ever-accruing merit by hanging the sign bearing these words upon every available post.Others are of a stern and threatening nature, designed to make the most hardened ill-doer pause, as--in their own tongue--"Rubbish may be shot here"; which we should render, "At any moment, and in such a place as this, a just doom and extinction may overtake the worthless." This inscription is never to be seen except in waste expanses, where it points its significance with a multiplied force.There is another definite threat which is lavishly set out, and so thoroughly that it may be encountered in the least frequented and almost inaccessible spots.This, as it may be translated, reads, "Trespass not the forbidden.The profligate may flourish like the gourd for a season, but in the end assuredly they will be detected, and justice meted out with the relentless fury of the written law."In a converse position, the wide difference in the ceremonial forms of retaliatory invective has practically disarmed this usually eloquent person, and he long since abandoned every hope of expressing himself with any satisfaction in encounters of however acrimonious a trend.At first, with an urbane smile and gestures of dignified contempt, he impugned the authenticity of the Ancestral Tablets of those with whom he strove, in an unbroken stream of most bitter contumely.Finding them silent under this reproach, he next lightly traced their origin back through generations of afflicted lepers, deformed ape-beings, and Nameless Things, to a race of primitive ghouls, and then went on in relentless fluency to predict an early return in their descendants to the condition of a similar state.For some time he had a well-gratified assurance that those whom he assailed were so overwhelmed as to be incapable of retort, and in this belief he never failed to call upon passers-by to witness his triumph; but on the fourth occasion a young man whom I had thus publicly denounced for a sufficient though forgotten reason, after listening courteously to my venomous accusations, bestowed a two-cash piece upon me and passed on, remarking that it was hard, and those around, also, would have added from their stores had it been permitted.From this time onward I did not attempt to make myself disagreeable either in public or to those whom I esteemed privately.On the other hand, the barbarian manner of retort did not find me endowed by nature to parry it successfully.Quite lacking in measured periods, it aims, by an extreme rapidity of thrust and an insincerity of sequence, to entangle the one who is assailed in a complication of arising doubts and emotions.