Page:Strange stories from a Chinese studio.djvu/18

Rh causes. As for me, I cannot, with my poor autumn firefly's light, match myself against the hobgoblins of the age. I am but the dust in the sunbeam, a fit laughing-stock for devils. For my talents are not those of Kan Pao, elegant explorer of the records of the Gods; I am rather animated by the spirit of Su Tung-p'o, who loved to hear men speak of the supernatural. I get people to commit what they tell me to writing and subsequently I dress it up in the form of a story; and thus in the lapse of time my friends from all quarters have supplied me with quantities of material, which, from my habit of collecting, has grown into a vast pile.

Human beings, I would point out, are not beyond the pale of fixed laws, and yet there are more remarkable phenomena in their midst than in the country of those who crop their hair; antiquity is unrolled before us, and many tales are to be found therein stranger than that of the nation of Flying Heads. "Irrepressible bursts, and luxurious