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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: Indeed, the slightest intercourse with them could not fail to make
it evident. Their matter-of-fact way of looking at things is truly
distressing, coming as it does from so artistic a people.
One notices it all the more for the shock. To get a prosaic answer
from a man whose appearance and surroundings betoken better things
is not calculated to dull that answer's effect. Aston, in a
pamphlet on the Altaic tongues, cites an instance which is so much
to the point that I venture to repeat it here. He was a true
Chinaman, he says, who, when his English master asked him what he
thought of
"That orbed maiden
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