In China every year, about the beginning of April, certain officials, called Sz'hüen, used of old to go about the country armed with wooden clappers.

He seized the long iron lever near him, by which the enormous clapper of the bell was swung, and moved it like the handle of a pump.

Glancing round the room, it occurred to him that he might give the alarm by ringing the enormous bells near him; but though he set them slightly in motion, he could not agitate the immense clappers sufficiently to produce any sound.

"Well," continued the fiend, "I wish he may turn up shortly, for I am half deaf already with the banging and booming of this infernal clapper, which seems to have grown much worse of late; and the blessings and the crossings and the aspersions which I have to go through are most repugnant to my tastes, and unsuitable to my position in society.

"Then do you put them plaguy clappers away, and listen to me patiently," says he.

O cuckoopint, toll me the purple clapper That hangs in your clear green bell!"