194 CHINESE LITERATURE
such waste of labour and incongruity of position dis posed me to think that there cannot be a God after all."
One favourite piece is a letter which Liu Tsung-yiian writes in a bantering style to congratulate a well-to- do literary man on having lost everything in a fire, especially, as he explains, if the victim has been " utterly and irretrievably beggared." It will give such a rare opportunity, he points out, to show the world that there was no connection whatever between worldly means and literary reputation.
A well-known satirical piece by Liu Tsung-yiian is entitled "Catching Snakes," and is directed against the hardships of over-taxation :
" In the wilds of Hu-kuang there is an extraordinary kind of snake, having a black body with white rings. Deadly fatal, even to the grass and trees it may chance to touch ; in man, its bite is absolutely incurable. Yet, if caught and prepared, when dry, in the form of cakes, the flesh of this snake will soothe excitement, heal leprous sores, remove sloughing flesh, and expel evil spirits. And so it came about that the Court physician, acting under Imperial orders, exacted from each family a return of two of these snakes every year ; but as few persons were able to comply with the demand, it was subsequently made known that the return of snakes was to be considered in lieu of the usual taxes. Thereupon there ensued a general stampede among the people of those parts."
It turned out, however, that snake-catching was actually less deadly than paying such taxes as were exacted from those who dared not face its risks and elected to contribute in the ordinary way. One man, whose father and grandfather had both perished from
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