Kai Lungs Golden Hours | Page 5

to blame the hurried millions of
chance readers because they have only bought a few thousands of a
masterpiece; or, what is worse still, to pretend that good work is for the
few and that the mass will never appreciate it--in reply to which it is

sufficient to say that the critic himself is one of the mass and could not
be distinguished from others of the mass by his very own self were he a
looker-on.
In the best of times (the most stable, the least hurried) the date at which
general appreciation comes is a matter of chance, and to-day the
presentation of any achieved work is like the reading of Keats to a
football crowd. It is of no significance whatsoever to English Letters
whether one of its glories be appreciated at the moment it issues from
the press or ten years later, or twenty, or fifty. Further, after a very
small margin is passed, a margin of a few hundreds at the most, it
matters little whether strong permanent work finds a thousand or fifty
thousand or a million of readers. Rock stands and mud washes away.
What is indeed to be deplored is the lack of communication between
those who desire to find good stuff and those who can produce it: it is
in the attempt to build a bridge between the one and the other that men
who have the privilege of hearing a good thing betimes write such
words as I am writing here.
HILAIRE BELLOC

KAI LUNG'S GOLDEN HOURS
CHAPTER I
The Encountering of Six within a Wood
ONLY at one point along the straight earth-road leading from
Loo-chow to Yu-ping was there any shade, a wood of stunted growth,
and here Kai Lung cast himself down in refuge from the noontide sun
and slept. When he woke it was with the sound of discreet laughter
trickling through his dreams. He sat up and looked around. Across the
glade two maidens stood in poised expectancy within the shadow of a
wild fig-tree, both their gaze and their manner denoting a fixed
intention to be prepared for any emergency. Not being desirous that this

should tend towards their abrupt departure, Kai Lung rose guardedly to
his feet, with many gestures of polite reassurance, and having bowed
several times to indicate his pacific nature, he stood in an attitude of
deferential admiration. At this display the elder and less attractive of
the maidens fled, uttering loud and continuous cries of apprehension in
order to conceal the direction of her flight. The other remained,
however, and even moved a few steps nearer to Kai Lung, as though
encouraged by his appearance, so that he was able to regard her varying
details more appreciably. As she advanced she plucked a red blossom
from a thorny bush, and from time to time she shortened the broken
stalk between her jade teeth.
"Courteous loiterer," she said, in a very pearl-like voice, when they had
thus regarded one another for a few beats of time, "what is your
honourable name, and who are you who tarry here, journeying neither
to the east nor to the west?"
"The answer is necessarily commonplace and unworthy of your polite
interest," was the diffident reply. "My unbecoming name is Kai, to
which has been added that of Lung. By profession I am an incapable
relater of imagined tales, and to this end I spread my mat wherever my
uplifted voice can entice together a company to listen. Should my
feeble efforts be deemed worthy of reward, those who stand around
may perchance contribute to my scanty store, but sometimes this is
judged superfluous. For this cause I now turn my expectant feet from
Loo-chow towards the untried city of Yu-ping, but the undiminished li
stretching relentlessly before me, I sought beneath these trees a refuge
from the noontide sun."
"The occupation is a dignified one, being to no great degree removed
from that of the Sages who compiled The Books," remarked the maiden,
with an encouraging smile. "Are there many stories known to your
retentive mind?"
"In one form or another, all that exist are within my mental grasp,"
admitted Kai Lung modestly. "Thus equipped, there is no arising
emergency for which I am unprepared."

"There are other things that I would learn of your craft. What kind of
story is the most favourably received, and the one whereby your
collecting bowl is the least ignored?"
"That depends on the nature and condition of those who stand around,
and therein lies much that is essential to the art," replied Kai Lung, not
without an element of pride. "Should the company be chiefly formed of
the illiterate and the immature of both sexes, stories depicting the
embarrassment of unnaturally round-bodied mandarins, the
unpremeditated flight of eccentrically-garbed