assumed it to be an established Chinese proverb, Ford Madox Ford having picked up a proverb from Ernest Bramah, "It would be hypocrisy to seek for the person of the Sacred Emperor in a Low Tea House."

The proverb with "a longer history than any other recorded proverb in the world", going back to "around 1800 BC" is in a Sumerian clay tablet, "The bitch by her acting too hastily brought forth the blind". Though many proverbs are ancient, they were all newly