Whilst searching the free e-books at FeedBooks.com, I happened to run into two books written in the 1920’s by Ernest Bramah Smith: The Wallet of Kai Lung and Kai Lung’s Golden Hours. Kai Lung is a traveling story teller in a China of long ago. The books consist largely of the tales he tales; but also of the scrapes he gets into, and how he uses his stories to get out of them.

The tales are often funny, and remind me somewhat of Barry Hughart’s Bridge of Birds, though they neither as fantastical nor as broad in their humor; but the real selling point is the language, which is both precise and beautiful. These are not books that you can skim; there are no wasted words, and if you miss any you’ll miss something important.

Here, Kai Lung describes a particularly pretty girl:

After secretly observing the unstudied grace of her movements, the most celebrated picture-maker of the province burned the implements of his craft, and began life anew as a trainer of performing elephants.

Here he examines the alternatives open to him:

“It has been said,” he began at length, withdrawing his eyes reluctantly from an usually large insect upon the ceiling and addressing himself to the maiden, “that there are few situations in life that cannot be honourably settled, and without any loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold, or by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a precipice on a dark night.”

And here, he is telling of a grandfather who is advising his grandson on finding a bride:

“What suitable maiden suggests herself to your doubtless better-informed mind? Is there one of the house of Tung?”

“There are eleven,” replied Chang Tao, with a gesture of despair, “all reputed to be untiring with their needle, skilled in the frugal manipulation of cold rice, devout, discreet in the lines of their attire, and so sombre of feature as to be collectively known to the available manhood of the city as the Terror that Lurks for the Unwary. Suffer not your discriminating footsteps to pause before that house, O father of my father!”

Good fun, and not at all the worse for wear after all these years. Check ’em out.