Mi Li: A Chinese Fairy Tale - Page 2

and
so on, that the prince wanted to know who the princess was, whose name
was the same as her father's. As the Chinese have not the blessing (for
aught I know) of having family surnames as we have, and as what would be
their christian-names, if they were so happy as to be christians, are
quite different for men and women, the Chinese, who think that must be a
rule all over the world because it is theirs, decided that there could
not exist upon the square face of the earth a woman whose name was the
same as her father's. They repeated this so often, and with so much
deference and so much obstinacy, that the prince, totally forgetting the
original oracle, believed that he wanted to know who the woman was who
had the same name as her father. However, remembring there was something
in the question that he had taken for royal, he always said _the king
her father_. The prime minister consulted the red book or court-calendar,
which was _his_ oracle, and could find no such princess. All the
ministers at foreign courts were instructed to inform themselves if
there was any such lady; but as it took up a great deal of time to put
these instructions into cypher, the prince's impatience could not wait
for the couriers setting out, but he determined to go himself in search
of the princess. The old king, who, _as is usual_, had left the whole
management of affairs to his son the moment he was fourteen, was charmed
with the prince's resolution of seeing the world, which he thought could
be done in a few days, the facility of which makes so many monarchs
never stir out of their own palaces till it is too late; and his majesty
declared, that he should approve of his son's choice, be the lady who
she would, provided she answered to the divine designation of having the
same name as her father.

The prince rode post to Canton, intending to embark there on board an
English man of war. With what infinite transport did he hear the evening
before he was to embark, that a sailor knew the identic lady in
question. The prince scalded his mouth with the tea he was drinking,
broke the old china cup it was in, and which the queen his mother had
given him at his departure from Pekin, and which had been given to her
great great great great grandmother queen Fi by Confucius himself, and
ran down to the vessel and asked for the man who knew his bride. It was
honest Tom O'Bull, an Irish sailor, who by his interpreter Mr. James
Hall, the supercargo, informed his highness that Mr. Bob Oliver of Sligo
had a daughter christened of both his names, the fair miss Bob Oliver.[1]
The prince by the plenitude of his power declared Tom a mandarin of the
first class, and at Tom's desire promised to speak to his brother the
king of Great Ireland, France