Estimable barbarian,--Your opportune suggestion that I should permit the
letters, wherein I have described with undeviating fidelity the customs
and manner of behaving of your accomplished race, to be set forth in
the form of printed leaves for all to behold, is doubtless
gracefully-intentioned, and this person will raise no barrier of dissent
against it.
In this he is inspired by the benevolent hope that his immature
compositions may to one extent become a model and a by-word to those who
in turn visit his own land of Fragrant Purity; for with exacting care
he has set down no detail that has not come under his direct observation
(although it is not to be denied that here or there he may, perchance,
have misunderstood an involved allusion or failed to grasp the inner
significance of an act), so that Impartiality necessarily sways his
brush, and Truth lurks within his inkpot.
In an entirely contrary manner some, who of recent years have gratified
us with their magnanimous presence, have returned to their own countries
not only with the internal fittings of many of our palaces (which,
being for the most part of a replaceable nature, need be only trivially
referred to, the incident, indeed, being generally regarded as a most
cordial and pressing variety of foreign politeness), but also--in
the lack of highly-spiced actuality--with subtly-imagined and truly
objectionable instances. These calumnies they have not hesitated to
commit to the form of printed books, which, falling into the hands
of the ignorant and undiscriminating, may even suggest to their
ill-balanced minds a doubt whether we of the Celestial Empire really are
the wisest, bravest, purest, and most enlightened people in existence.
As a parting, it only remains to be said that, in order to maintain
unimpaired the quaint-sounding brevity and archaic construction of your
prepossessing language, I have engraved most of the remarks upon the
receptive tablets of my mind as they were uttered. To one who can repeat
the Five Classics without stumbling this is a contemptible achievement.
Let it be an imposed obligation, therefore, that you retain these
portions unchanged as a test and a proof to all who may read. Of my
own deficient words, I can only in truest courtesy maintain that any
alteration must of necessity make them less offensively commonplace than
at present they are.
The Sign and immutable Thumb-mark of,