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Kai Lung's Golden Hours, by Ernest Bramah

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1587152096
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1587152096
ôThe Wallet of Kai Lung was a thing made deliberately,in hard material and completely successful. It wasmeant to produce a particular effect of humour by theuse of a foreign convention, the Chinese convention,in the English tongue. It was meant to produce acertain effect of philosophy and at the same time itwas meant to produce a certain completed interest offiction, of relation, of a short epic. It did allthese things.

ôIt is one of the tests of excellent work that suchwork is economic, that is, that there is nothingredundant in order or in vocabulary, and at the sametime nothing ellipticùin the full sense of that word:that is, no sentence in which so much is omitted thatthe reader is left puzzled. That is the quality youget in really good statuaryùin Houdon, for instance,or in that triumph the archaic Archer in the Louvre.The Wallet of Kai Lung satisfied all these conditions.

ôI do not know how often I have read it since I firstpossessed it. I know how many copies there are in myhouseùjust over a dozen. I know with what care I havebound it constantly for presentation to friends. I havebeen asked for an introduction to this its successor,Kai Lung's Golden Hours. It is worthy of its forerunner.There is the same plan, exactitude, working-out andachievement; and therefore the same complete satisfactionin the reading, or to be more accurate, in theincorporation of the work with oneself.ö

ùHilaire Belloc
From the Introduction