Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/175

 CHAPTER XVII.

FEATHER-BRUSHES.

There is, perhaps, nothing for which an educated Chinese feels such keen appreciation as what is called a kû-tien, or historical allusion, wherever or in whatever shape it may present itself. It would be a mistake to suppose that the kû-tien is only found in literary compositions, although the more elegant and accomplished the writer the more fully adorned will be his essay with references to the events of old as found in the early essayists and poets of China. There are such things as what may be called, without violence to language, embodied kû-tiens—customs, and even common objects of every-day use or ornament, around which gather literary and historical associations of the highest interest to the scholar. Just as the naturalist may see in the fully developed organ of an animal the evolutionary product of the embryo which existed in that animal's remote ancestor thousands of years ago, so will the Chinese scholar recognise in a fan or trinket the descendant, degenerate enough, perhaps, but still legitimate, of some forgotten progenitor of the past. It needs no unusual erudition even in Western life, for instance, to see in our modern habit of nodding to an acquaintance a relic of the complete prostrations that were performed in ancient times, or