Tae fourth division of Mr. Smith's work is entitled 'Proverbs containing allusions to historical, semi-historical, or mythical persons or events." A great number of these are explained by extracts from Mayers' Reader's Manual, some from an article by the predatory Sir John But the explanation is often it. Smith's own amusing style "That large class of foreigners in who have long and ineffectually struggled either to master the ordinary requirements of Chinese ceremony, or to get rid of it altogether, will hail with enthusiasm the following traditional sliver in regard to the customs of this same Pa Wang. 'Pa Wang inviting guests—brusque manners' BERASRLA. Ue is said to have been' as much disgusted as the modern Barbarian, with the inevitable courteous scuffles which ensue whenever Chinese meet, and took an advantage of his authority (unhappily impossible for a foreigner) to cut short the polite dispute. Seizing each one of his guests by the shoulders, he jerked him into a seat, with the observation: "You sit there!" This alone would have accounted for (as it certainly justifies) the immortality which his name has enjoyes for about two thousand years,"
To this division thirty pages are devoted, and the only note of dispraise that can be sounded is the want of chronological arrangement. First will come a Kutien GIN of the Sung dynasty, then one of Chou; next a story of Ch'ien-lung, then an extract from a fairy tale; after that a second reference to the Chou dynasty, a tale of the present century, a-romance of the Three Kingdoms, and a'Taoist legend. Surely it would have been easy and simple to arrange the various allusions on some sort of historical principle. Mr, Smith states, however, that the historical knowledge of the Chinese is often totally wanting in perspective, and that whatever anachronism. the reader may detect in these pages, he will be obliging enough to refer to their cause." So what can we say?
'A few phrases based on the reputed doings of that ill conditioned dwarf, Wu Ta-long, end Section IV, and serve as an introduction to Section V, Proverbs relating to specific places or districts, or to persons or events of merely local importance." These are not of very great general interest, though incidentally much is to be learnt from them,—as for example, that in the northern provinces, natives of Kuangtung and Fukien are contemptuously called Southern Barbarians (WF). Here is one of the best, or at any rate the moot amusing of this class "Liu Kao Shou curing a malady—external practice takes no account of internal maladies USS WHAM
temple by an arrow which passed through AaE. A man was wounded in the right his temple (apparently into the frontal sinus) and came out at the left temple. The physician named above was called to attend the case, and taking a saw, cut off the ends of the arrow close to the man's head and according to the invariable practice of chinese doctors) stuck on a plaster over the wound, To this treatment the family offered the natural objection that the body of the arrow was 8I unextracted, to which he replied: External practitioners have nothing to do with internal complaints, The phrase is used of outsiders (Jo %bf%4) in distinction from those directly concerned.
Section VI is devoted to "puns and other linguistic diversions." First char-fades, or acted puns," as Mr. Smith well calls them, and their varieties are noticed. Thus ''a bat holds in his mouth two golden cash, and in his claws peaches; the bat stands for prosperity, fu MQ, the peach for old age shou while the two cash, shuang dien WSL, very imperfectly suggest the words shuang chuan $2> both complete, the whole picture thus standing for the expression $4982, Happiness and Longevity each in completeness.
Then follow puns proper of which this is an example
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.