“Assuredly,” Ng Ch’u said to himself, as he turned east down Forty-second Street, “if I were a fool, I would now write to China and complete my funeral arrangements. I would order longevity boards of seasoned wood and cause the priests to pick out a charming retreat for my earthly remains. Too, if I were a fool, I might quote the Book of Ceremonies and Outer Observances to the tiger about to gore me. Ah--but I am not a fool-- I am only a coward-- I beg your pardon!” as his head sunk on his chest, he bumped into an indignant dowager who came from a department store, her plump arms crowded with bargains. “I beg your pardon--” “Goodness! Can’t you see where you’re going--?” A bundle dropped. Ng Ch’u bent to pick it up. So did the woman. Ng Ch’u straightened up again and, in the process, butted her chin with a round face that was still earnestly apologetic. Another bundle dropped. People stopped, snickered, nudged each other. The woman suppressed unwomanly words. Ng Ch’u then decided to go away from there. “_Haya! haya!_” he continued in his thoughts as he went on his way. “Blessed be the Excellent Lord Gautama who made me a coward! For--is there a keener foresight, a better protection, than fear?” And, head erect, he walked along, toward his up-town shop that faced Fifth Avenue, beneath an enormous sign bearing his name in braggart, baroque, gilt letters, with a profusion of China’s and Japan’s choicest wares--dim, precious things--bronzes mellowed with the patina of the swinging centuries and embroideries and white and green and amber jade; kakemonos in sepia and gold and pigeon-gray, on which the brush of an artist long since dead had retraced the marvels of some capital of the Ashikaga dynasty; ancient koto harps with plectrums of carved ivory; satsuma bowls enameled with ho-ho birds; but mostly the porcelains of China--porcelains of all periods--Wen-tchang statuettes in aubergine and lambent yellow Kang-he ginger-jars painted with blue and white hawthorn sprays, Keen-lung egg-shell plates with backs of glowing ruby, Yung-ching peach-blow whose ruddy-brown shimmered with flecks of silver and green and pink like the first touch of Spring that is coaxing the colors from the shy sepal of the peach-blossom. He loved porcelains. They represented to him more than money, more than success. He had attached himself to their study as an old Florentine attached himself to the study of theology, caring nothing for religion, but with a sort of icy-cold, impersonal, scientific passion. Somehow--for there _was_ his fabulous Odyssey, from a mud-chinked Ninguta hut to a gleaming Fifth Avenue shop--these porcelains were to him the apex of his life, the full, richly flavored sweetness of his achievement; and he often gently teased the Moon-beam, who had become Madame Full Moon, because, in their neat Pell Street flat, she preferred to eat her evening rice from heavy, white American stoneware with a border of improbable forget-me-nots.