| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Court Life in China by Isaac Taylor Headland: some phase of modern affairs, Western laws or political economy.
This same procedure is to be followed in examination of
candidates for office."
And now notice another phase of this same edict. "The old methods
of gaining military degrees by trial of strength with stone
weights, agility with the sword, or marksmanship with the bow on
foot or on horseback, ARE OF NO USE TO MEN IN THE ARMY, WHERE
STRATEGY AND MILITARY SCIENCE ARE THE SINE QUA NON TO OFFICE, and
hence they should be done away with forever." It is, as it was
with Kuang Hsu, the strengthening of the army she has in mind in
her first efforts at reform, that she may be able to back up with
|
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 Chance by Joseph Conrad: suggesting a friendly consultation as to the boy's future, the
incensed (but always refined) poet wrote in answer a letter of mere
polished badinage which offended mortally the Liverpool people.
This witty outbreak of what was in fact mortification and rage
appeared to them so heartless that they simply kept the boy. They
let him go to sea not because he was in their way but because he
begged hard to be allowed to go.
"Oh! You do know," said Mrs. Fyne after a pause. "Well--I felt
myself very much abandoned. Then his choice of life--so
extraordinary, so unfortunate, I may say. I was very much grieved.
I should have liked him to have been distinguished--or at any rate
Chance |
