Pork cooked in eleven different ways: chopped, cold, with red beans and with white beans, with bamboo shoots, with onions, and with cherries, with eggs, with mushrooms, with cabbage, and with turnips. Ducks and chickens stuffed with pine needles and roasted. Smoked fish. Shrimps and crabs, fried together. Shark fins. Boiled birds’ nests. Porridge of tiny yellow seeds like bird seed. Cakes in the shapes of seashells, fish, dragons, butterflies, and flowers. Chrysanthemum soup, steaming in a yellow bowl with a green dragon twisting around it. Not one other thing did that poor Little Emperor have for his supper! When he was so full that he couldn’t hold anything more, not even one sugared watermelon seed, they took off his silk napkin embroidered with little brown monkeys eating pink and orange persimmons. He was so sleepy that he did not even stamp his feet when they washed his face and hands. Then they took off his red silk gown embroidered with gold dragons and blue clouds and lined with soft gray fur, his yellow silk shirt and his red satin shoes with their thick white soles. But he went to bed in his pale yellow pantaloons, tied around the ankles with rose-colored ribbons. I must tell you about his bed. It was made of brick, and inside of it a small fire was built to keep the Little Emperor warm. On top of this three yellow silk mattresses were placed, then silk sheets, red, yellow, green, blue, and violet, then a coverlet of yellow satin embroidered with stars. Under his head were pillows stuffed with tea leaves; and above him was a canopy of yellow silk, embroidered with a great round moon whose golden rays streamed down the yellow silk curtains drawn around him. He fell asleep, and this is what he dreamed. The long golden rays seemed to turn into the bars of a cage. Yes, he was in a huge cage! He tried frantically to get out! He beat against the bars! Then he saw what looked like the roots of trees, and brown tree trunks, a grove all around the cage. But the trees moved and stepped about, and, looking up the trunks, instead of leaves he saw feathers, and still farther, sharp beaks, and then bright eyes looking at him. They were birds! What he had thought were the roots of trees were their claws, and the trunks of the trees were their legs. But what enormous birds! They were as big as men, while he was as small as a bird. “Let me out!” he shouted. “Don’t you know I am the Emperor, and every one must obey me? Let me out, I say!” “Ah, he is beginning to sing,” said one bird to another. “Not a very musical song. Too shrill by far! Take my advice, wring his neck and roast him. He would make a tender, juicy morsel for our supper.” [Illustration: “Please, _please_ let me out!”] “Oh, let me out! Please, _please_ let me out!” cried the poor Little Emperor in terror. “He is singing more sweetly now,” remarked one of the birds.