causes.[1] As for me, I cannot, with my poor autumn firefly's light, match myself against the hobgoblins of the age.[2] I am but the dust in the sunbeam, a fit laughing-stock for devils.[3] For my talents are not those of Kan Pao,[4] elegant explorer of the records of the Gods; I am rather animated by the spirit of Su Tung-p'o,[5] 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.[6]
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;[7] antiquity is unrolled before us, and many tales are to be found therein stranger than that of the nation of Flying Heads.[8] "Irrepressible bursts, and luxurious
- ↑ That is, to the operation of some influence surviving from a previous existence.
- ↑ This is another hit at the ruling classes. Hsi K'ang, a celebrated musician and alchemist (a.d. 223-262), was sitting one night alone, playing upon his lute, when suddenly a man with a tiny face walked in, and began to stare hard at him, the stranger's face enlarging all the time. "I'm not going to match myself against a devil!" cried the musician, after a few moments, and instantly blew out the light.
- ↑ When Liu Chüan, Governor of Wu-ling, determined to relieve his poverty by trade, he saw a devil standing by his side, laughing and rubbing its hands for glee. "Poverty and wealth are matters of destiny," said Liu Chüan; "but to be laughed at by a devil," and accordingly he desisted from his intention.
- ↑ A writer who flourished in the early part of the fourth century, and composed a work in thirty books entitled Supernatural Researches.
- ↑ The famous poet, statesman, and essayist, who flourished a.d. 1036-1101.
- ↑ And his friends had the habit of jotting down for his unfailing delight anything quaint or comic that they came across." — The World on Charles Dickens, July 24, 1878.
- ↑ It is related in the Historical Record that when T'ai Po and Yü Chung fled to the southern savages they saw men with tattooed bodies and short hair.
- ↑ A fabulous community, so called because the heads of the men are in the habit of leaving their bodies, and flying down to marshy places to feed on worms and crabs. A red ring is seen the night before the flight encircling the neck of the man whose head is about to fly; at daylight the head returns. Some say that the ears are used as wings; others that the hands also leave the body and fly away.
