| 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: may not need them she affects to be so helpless as to require
their aid.
Until very recently education was discouraged rather than sought
by the Manchu lady. Many of the princesses could not read the
simplest book nor write a letter to a friend, but depended upon
educated eunuchs to perform these services for them. The Chinese
lady on the contrary can usually read and write with ease, and
the education of some of them is equal to that of a Hanlin.
Socially the ladies of these two classes never meet. Their
husbands may be of equal rank and well known to each other in
official life, but the ladies have no wish to meet each other.
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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 Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: children of Ham, who are cursed and reprobate, as Scripture
declares, and their blackness testifies, being Satan's own livery;
among whom therefore there can be none of the elect, wherefore the
elect are not required to treat them as brethren.
Sir Richard.--What a plague of a pragmatical sea-lawyer have we
here? And I doubt not, thou hypocrite, that though thou wilt call
the negroes' black skin Satan's livery, when it serves thy turn to
steal them, thou wilt find out sables to be Heaven's livery every
Sunday, and up with a godly howl unless a parson shall preach in a
black gown, Geneva fashion. Out upon thee! Go on with thy tale,
lest thou finish thy sermon at Launceston after all.
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