Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/153

 spell-bound as if they were witnessing their first pantomime, he can write as learnedly in the Nineteenth Century about Cinderella or Puss in Boots as Max Müller upon the science of language. One of these stories common to so many lands is that of Rip Van Winkle, the Chinese prototype of whom was a person called Wang Chih. Another is that of the King who put his head into a basin of water and took it out again, but in that brief second lived a long, chequered, and laborious career, rose from poverty to wealth, married, had a family, suffered disgrace, and was reduced to penury and old age. The Chinese counterpart of this fabled monarch—who was, if we remember rightly, a Persian—is the illustrious sage of whom we are now writing. It is said that early in life Lü Tsû was animated by ambition, and longed to distinguish himself in the affairs of state. In this he was opposed by the wise counsels of a Taoist philosopher, who expatiated to him on the vanity of earthly things. It was not, however, until a very remarkable dream occurred to him that he was induced to give up his design. Entering an inn one evening, he ordered some rice for his supper, and while it was being cooked fell asleep. Immediately he commenced a long and adventurous career. He thought he rose high in office, passing through all the proper grades, until, when at the pinnacle of greatness, he incurred the imperial displeasure, and was disgraced. Waking with a start, he found that his rice was just ready; and the lesson he laid to heart was, that, for so unsatisfactory a career, which, in spite of its wearisome prolongation, really only lasted a few minutes, it would be foolish to surrender the truer pleasures of indifferentism. He therefore abandoned his high schemes,