Hung Lou Meng, or, the Dream of the Red Chamber, a Chinese Novel, Book I

BOOK I. This translation was suggested not by any pretensions to range myself among the ranks of the body of sinologues, but by the perplexities and difficulties experienced by me as a student in Peking, when, at the completion of the Tzu Erh Chi, I had to plunge in the maze of the Hung Lou Meng. Shortcomings are, I feel sure, to be discovered, both in the prose, as well as among the doggerel ...