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It is very serious, Alan, as you shall hear. Tao, with his great news of your wonderful world, is very fast winning over our men to his cause. A revolt, there may be, here in our own city a revolution against our government, our king. We can only look to you now, my husband, to save our country from Tao as well as your own."
He tells us all we know, or think we know, about Laotse: that he was born in a village in southern Honan; kept the Royal Library at Honanfu; met Confucius there in 517; and at last rode away on his ox into the west, leaving the Tao Teh King with the Keeper of the Pass on the frontier; and then goes on to say that there were two other men "whom many regarded as having been the real Laotse"; one of the Lao Lai, a contemporary of Confucius, who wrote fifteen treatises on the practices of the school of Tao; the other, a "Grand Historiographer of Chow," Tan by name, who lived some century and a quarter later.
I saw nothing was required of me at the moment, and sat down also. I had opportunity now to examine the strange things and people about me more in detail. The Mercutians all seemed to be of the same short, squat, red-haired type. Tao was, indeed, the only one I saw who had black hair; and he was the tallest, and by far the most commanding looking figure of them all.
"Tao has it, indeed, but he is not so great a monster that he would use it against us." I was not so sure of that, and I said so. "You don't mean to tell me, Miela, that your government has allowed Tao to prepare all this destructive armament without itself arming?" Again she shook her head. "We have been preparing, too, and all our young men can be called if occasion comes.
"He might come over here and try to make himself king," Mercer said suddenly. "If it's like that maybe he could do it, too, with this grand earth-conquest getting ready. Tell the king that see what he says." "He says that he realizes and fears it," Miela answered. "But he thinks that first Tao will go to your earth, and he may never come back. So much may happen "
Occasionally a rag-picker, or some humble person so little separated from the life hereafter that to push a trifle closer does not spell much peril, can be seen hooking up rags and whatnots from the piles of Peking offal. If you speak to him he gives an unintelligent pu chih tao "I do not know" and moves boorishly on.
"Miela herself didn't thoroughly understand either the basic principle or the mechanism itself when she started down here." "Good Lord! And she ventured " "Tao was already on the point of leaving when she conceived the idea. He had already made one trip almost to the edge of the earth's atmosphere, you know, and now was ready to start again." "That first trip was last November," I said.
"But this enchanting apparition is Melodious Vision!" exclaimed Chang Tao. "What new bewilderment is here?" "Since you have thus expressed yourself, I will now throw off the mask and reveal fully why I have hitherto spared your life, and for what purpose I have brought you to these barren heights," replied Pe-lung.
The story is profoundly characteristic: like Ah Sin's smile in the poem, "childlike and bland"; but hiding wonderful depths of philosophy beneath. Laotse showed his deep Occult wisdom when he said that the Man of Tao "does difficult things while they are still easy." Liehtse tells you the story of the Assitant to the Keeper of the Wild Beasts at Loyang.
You cannot speak of Tao to a pedant; his scope is too restricted. But now that you have emerged from your narrow sphere, and have seen the great sea, you know your own insignificance, and I can speak of great principles. "Have you never heard of the Frog of the Old Well? The Frog said to the Turtle of the Eastern Sea, 'Happy indeed am I! I hop on the rail around the well.
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