While it was yet (or ought to have been) springtide, Nieh Shen-seng devoted an evening to the ancient story which has made Hanyang famous throughout the eighteen provinces for considerably more than eighteen hundred years. At the foot of the Tortoise Hill, the southern shore of the Moon Lake has for centuries been adorned by a garden, wherein is a “drum tower” and a hall for tea-drinking and poesy. In recent years it has been enlarged by the addition of a handsome “loft,” with cloisters built around the stone pattern pathed garden of delights. The gate bears the inscription, “Ancient Harpsichord Pavilion.” Thus have sympathetic souls combined their energies to magnify the two names which the people delight to honour. As the story is the most æsthetic of the neutral tint tales of this ancient land, the circle of sympathetic listeners may be (as it deserves to be) indefinitely enlarged.

With the Chinese couplet translated above by way of preface, Nieh proceeded to relate the story of Peh-ya and his sympathetic listener:—

Peh-ya and his Sympathetic Listener.

“In the old days described in the Spring and Autumn Annals, when China consisted of a host of rival States hard to amalgamate, there lived a celebrated statesman of the name of Yü Peh-ya. His birthplace was the capital of the kingdom of Ch'u, which is now the present Kingchow (the “island of thorn bushes” to which Ts'ao Ts'ao sent his cynical adviser Ti'ao Hen), to the west of the modern Wuchang.