A fairly detailed, extremely concrete and remarkably straightforward magistrate handbook. (The Li Mo ed. is heavily punctuated and underlined.) The arrangement in ten sections (門) follows the standard pattern, starting with the appointment of the magistrate, his assumption of office and the organization of the yamen; the various domains of administration (with three juan devoted to justice) are treated in j. 4-8; the last two chapters are on the magistrate’s dealings with various people (待人) and on “miscellaneous affairs” (雜事), discussing famine relief among other topics. One notes certain elements found in early Qing magistrate handbooks but generally absent from Ming works: for example, though private secretaries are not yet mentioned, the author recommends to hire specialized scribes to help the magistrate in his confidential correspondence and accounting. In the 1637 ed. j. 10 is followed by a 10-folio text (with separate pagination) titled Gao Zhongxian gong shenyan xianyue zecheng zhouxian shu 高忠憲公申嚴憲約責成州縣疏, by Gao Panlong 高攀龍 (see under Zecheng zhouxian yue). Then there is a Zhipu xuji consisting of a 30-folio text titled Xiangxing yaolan (q.v.), which deals with the functions of prefectural judge (推官). Another appendix (not part of Zhipu) consists of Wang Kentang’s Shenxing shuo (q.v.). Li Mo’s intro. to this 1637 ed. states that he was given the text by a colleague in 1632 and wished he had been able to use it during his first years as a magistrate; he had it engraved in 1637 in Nan Zhili (畿南) with the help of a group of “comrades” (six collators, readers, editors, and so on, are mentioned, including himself; one notes the names of Chen Longzheng 陳龍正 and Cai Maode 蔡懋德 [1586-1644, see under Xueshi yigui bubian], as well as Hu Xuan and Yang Guangzuo); he also says that he “extracted from his trunk” the two texts appended to the Zhipu proper, which he calls Xianyue shenxing ershu 憲約慎刑二書 (referring to Gao Panlong’s and Wang Kentang’s texts). The appendixes to the eds. at Beitu and LSS include a postf. to Lü Kun’s Xingjie 刑戒 by Zou Yuanbiao 鄒元標 (1592), the Shenxing shuo, with Wang Kentang’s 1612 pref., the Xingjie itself, and the text by Gao Panglong. She’s surname is erroneously written Yu 余 in the Chongzhen ed. held at Liaoning; the ed. with Hu Xuan’s 1639 pref. and the Chengxiang guan ed. have “She” at the head of j. 1-2 and xuji, and “Yu” at the head of j. 3-10. The same error is occasionally found later (see e.g. Zheng Duan’s Zhengxue lu [q.v.], in both pref. and text).