The second is a house hung upside down. It has a multitude of doors and windows. The sweetest fluid is stored up in it. And its inhabitants multiply in it. It is a honeycomb.
The third resembles a long-footed slug. It produces threads for making nets, Into which all falls for its nourishment. It is night which makes it happy. It is a spider.”
Other guessers were still more skilful, albeit they did not compose quatrains.
A Sovereign had placed a white bird under a bell, and ordered his Minister to guess. He answered that the emperor could not force him to guess. When he was asked why not, he said, “Let him, first of all, let his white bird escape.”
On another occasion a rat was hidden. Everybody said it was a rat. But one very clever player insisted that there were four rats under the bell. The bell was removed, and it was found that, true enough, there were four rats. Whilst she had been in confinement, the rat had given birth to three little ones.
Guessing is done by means of the Koua, or diagrams, of which I have spoken elsewhere.
We also play with shuttlecocks, made of four duck feathers, the ends of which are passed through the square hole in the centre of one of our coins and bent down, which renders them very elastic. Ladies play with battledores; gentlemen use their feet, as in the English game of football. A certain height is fixed upon, and the player who fails to reach it loses the game. The same game is played with leather balls stuffed with cotton.
A coin is thrown against the wall. The player whose coin springs back farthest from the wall begins. He throws his coin in any direction, and it is agreed upon that the other players must throw their coins so as to fall at such or such a distance from the place where his is lying. Those who manage to do this, or get closest to the mark, win, those who are farthest off lose.
This game used formerly to be played by the ladies of the Court, but now-a-days it is only played by children in the streets.
Our card games are more complicated than those played in Europe. One of the reasons of this is the number of cards in the Chinese pack, which contains 120, subdivided into four classes, corresponding with four colours, and into thirty species. There are thus only four cards of each species, and thirty of each class.