| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: more, together with portraits of all the noted emperors. Among
these portraits we may now find two of the Empress Dowager, one
painted by Miss Carl, and another by Mr. Vos, a well-known
American portrait painter.
XIII
The Ladies of the Court
I love to talk with my people of their Majesties, the princesses,
and the Chinese ladies, as I have seen and known them. Your
friendship I will always remember. Her Majesty, your imperial
sister, found a warm place in my heart and is treasured there.
Please extend to the Imperial Princess my cordial greetings and
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Republic by Plato: has more existence is truer than of that which has less. The invariable
and immortal has a more real existence than the variable and mortal, and
has a corresponding measure of knowledge and truth. The soul, again, has
more existence and truth and knowledge than the body, and is therefore more
really satisfied and has a more natural pleasure. Those who feast only on
earthly food, are always going at random up to the middle and down again;
but they never pass into the true upper world, or have a taste of true
pleasure. They are like fatted beasts, full of gluttony and sensuality,
and ready to kill one another by reason of their insatiable lust; for they
are not filled with true being, and their vessel is leaky (Gorgias). Their
pleasures are mere shadows of pleasure, mixed with pain, coloured and
The Republic |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling: Explaining ten to one was always fair.
I'm the Prophet of the Utterly Absurd,
Of the Patently Impossible and Vain --
And when the Thing that Couldn't has occurred,
Give me time to change my leg and go again.
With my "~Tumpa-tumpa-tumpa-tum-pa tump!~"
In the desert where the dung-fed camp-smoke curled
There was never voice before us till I led our lonely chorus,
I -- the war-drum of the White Man round the world!
By the bitter road the Younger Son must tread,
Verses 1889-1896 |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: of servants--well, such a duke could live like a great lord. The last
of these great gentlemen in France was the Prince de Talleyrand.--This
duke leaves four children, two of them girls. Granting that he has
great luck in marrying them all well, each of these descendants will
have but sixty or eighty thousand francs a year now; each is the
father or mother of children, and consequently obliged to live with
the strictest economy in a flat on the ground floor or first floor of
a large house. Who knows if they may not even be hunting a fortune?
Henceforth the eldest son's wife, a duchess in name only, has no
carriage, no people, no opera-box, no time to herself. She has not her
own rooms in the family mansion, nor her fortune, nor her pretty toys;
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