TRANSFORMATION.
LITTLE SEAL-SKIN
The fisherman walked up the hill,
His boat lay on the sand,
His net was on his shoulder still,
His home a mile inland.
And as he walk’d among the whin
He saw a little white seal-skin,
Which he took up in his hand.
Then “How,” said he, “can this thing be?
A seal-skin, and no seal within?”
Thus pondered he,
Partly in fear,
Till he remember’d what he’d heard
Of creatures in the sea, —
Sea-men and women, who are stirred
One day in every year
To drop their seal-skins on the sand,
To leave the sea, and seek the land
For twelve long hours,
Playing about in sweet sunshine,
Among the corn-fields, with corn-flowers,
Wild roses, and woodbine:
Till night comes on, and then they flit
Adown the fields, and sit
Upon the shore and put their seal-skins on,
And slip into the sea, and they are gone.
The fisherman strok’d the fur
Of the little white seal-skin,
Soft as silk, and white as snow;
And he said to himself, “I know
That some little sea-woman lived in
This seal-skin, perhaps not long ago.
I wonder what has become of her!
And why she left this on the whin,
Instead of slipping it on again
When all the little sea-women and men
Went hurrying down to the sea!
Ah! well, she never meant
It for me,
That I should take it, but I will,
Home to my house on the hill,”
Said the fisherman; and home he went.
The Fisher dozed before his fire,
The night was cold outside,
The bright full moon was rising higher
Above the swelling tide,
And the wind brought the sound of breakers nigher,
Even to the hill side;
When suddenly
Something broke at the cottage door,
Like the plash
Of a little wave on a pebbly shore;
And as water frets in the backward drain
Of the wave, seeming to fall in pain,
There came a wailing after the plash. —
The fisherman woke, and said, “Is it rain?”
Then he rose from his seat
And open’d his door a little way,
But soon shut it again
With a kind of awe;
For the prettiest little sea-woman lay
On the grass at his feet
That you ever saw;
She began to sob and to say,
“Who has stolen my skin from me?
And who is there will take me in?
For I have lost my little seal-skin,
And I can’t get back to the sea.”
The Fisherman stroked the fur
Of the downy white seal-skin,
And he said, “Shall I give it her? —
But then she would get in,
And hurry away to the sea,
And not come back to me,
And I should be sorry all my life,
I want her so for my little wife.”
The Fisherman thought for a minute,
Then he carried the seal-skin to
A secret hole in the thatch,
Where he hid it cleverly, so
That a sharp-sighted person might go,
In front of the hole and not catch
A glimpse of the seal-skin within it.
After this he lifted the latch
Of his door once more,
But the night was darker, for
The moon was swimming under a cloud,
So the Fisherman couldn’t see
The little sea-woman plainly,
Seeing a fleck of white foam only,
That was sobbing aloud
As before.
“Little sea-woman,” said the Fisherman,
“Will you come home to me,
Will you help me to work, and help me to save,
Care for my house and me,
And the little children that we shall have?”
“Yes, Fisherman,” said she.
So the Fisherman had his way,
And seven years of life
Pass’d by him like one happy day;
But, as for his sea-wife,
She sorrowed for the sea alway
And loved not her land life.
Morning and evening, and all day
She would say
To herself – “The sea! the sea!”
And at night, when dreaming,
She stretch’d her arms about her, seeming
To seek little Willie,
It was the sea
She would have clasp’d, not he —
The great sea’s purple water,
Dearer to her than little son or daughter.
Yet she was kind
To her children three,
Harry, fair Alice, and baby Willie;
And set her mind
To keep things orderly.
“Only,” thought she,
“If I could but find
That little seal-skin I lost one day.”
She didn’t know
That her husband had it hidden away;
Nor he
That she long’d for it so.
Until
One evening as he climb’d the hill,
The Fisherman found her amongst the whin,
Sobbing, saying, “My little seal-skin —
Who has stolen my skin from me?
How shall I find it, and get in,
And hurry away to the sea?”
“Then she shall have her will,”
Said he.
So
Next morning, when he rose to go
A-fishing, and his wife still slept,
He stole
The seal-skin from that secret hole
Where he had kept
It, and flung it on a chair,
Saying, “She will be glad to find it there
To-day
When I am gone,
And yet
Perhaps she will not put it on,”
He said, “Nor go away.”
In sleeping his wife wept;
Then the Fisherman took his net
And crept
Into the chill air.
The night drew on – the air was still,
Homeward the fisher climbed the hill.
All day he’d thought, “She will not go;”
And now, “She has not,” pondered he.
“She is not gone,” he said, “I know,
There is a lamp in our window,
Put ready on the sill
To guide me home, and I shall see
The dear light glimmering presently,
Just as I round the hill.”
But when he turn’d, there was no light
To guide him homeward through the night.
Then, “I am late,” he said,
“And maybe she was weary
Looking so long for me.
She lays the little ones in bed
Well content,
In the inner room where I shall find her,
And where she went,
Forgetting to leave the light behind her.”
So he came to his cottage door,
And threw it open wide;
But stood a breathing space, before
He dared to look inside.
No fire was in the fireplace, nor
A light on any side;
But a little heap lay on the floor,
And the voice of a baby cried.
Rocking and moaning on the floor,
That little heap
Was the children, tired with crying,
Trying to sleep,
Moaning and rocking to and fro;
But Baby Willie hindered the trying
By wailing so.
Then “Wife! wife!” said the Fisherman,
“Come from the inner room.”
There was no answer, and he ran
Searching into the gloom.
“Wife! wife! why don’t you come?
The children want you, and I’ve come home.”
“Mammy’s gone, Daddy,” said Harry —
“Gone into the sea;
She’ll never come back to carry
Tired Baby Willie.
It’s no use now, Daddy, looking about;
I can tell you just how it all fell out.
“There was a seal-skin
In the kitchen —
A little crumpled thing;
I can’t think how it came there;
But this morning
Mammy found it on a chair,
And when she began
To feel it, she dropped
It on the floor —
But snatch’d it up again and ran
Straight out at the door,
And never stopped
Till she-reach’d the shore.
“Then we three, Daddy,
Ran after, crying, ‘Take us to the sea!
Wait for us, Mammy, we are coming too!
Here’s Alice, Willie can’t keep up with you!
Mammy, stop – just for a minute or two!’
But Alice said, ‘Maybe
She’s making us a boat
Out of the seal-skin cleverly,
And by-and-by she’ll float
It on the water from the sands
For us.’ Then Willie clapt his hands
And shouted, ‘Run on, Mammy, to the sea,
And we are coming, Willie understands.’
“At last we came to where the hill
Slopes straight down to the beach,
And there we stood all breathless, still,
Fast clinging each to each.
We saw her sitting upon a stone,
Putting the little seal-skin on.
Oh! Mammy! Mammy!
She never said good-bye, Daddy,
She didn’t kiss us three;
She just put the little seal-skin on,
And slipped into the sea!
Oh! Mammy’s gone, Daddy; Mammy’s gone!
She slipp’d into the sea!”
A SURPRISE
“She is dead!” they said to him. “Come away;
Kiss her! and leave her! – thy love is clay!”
They smoothed her tresses of dark brown hair;
On her forehead of stone they laid it fair:
Over her eyes, which gazed too much,
They drew the lids with a gentle touch;
With a tender touch they closed up well
The sweet thin lips that had secrets to tell;
About her brows, and her dear, pale face
They tied her veil and her marriage-lace;
And drew on her white feet her white silk shoes; —
Which were the whiter no eye could choose!
And over her bosom they crossed her hands;
“Come away,” they said, – “God understands!”
And then there was Silence; – and nothing there
But the Silence – and scents of eglantere,
And jasmine, and roses, and rosemary;
For they said, “As a lady should lie, lies she!”
And they held their breath as they left the room,
With a shudder to glance at its stillness and gloom.
But he – who loved her too well to dread
The sweet, the stately, the beautiful dead, —
He lit his lamp, and took the key,
And turn’d it! – Alone again – he and she!
He and she; but she would not speak,
Though he kiss’d, in the old place, the quiet cheek;
He and she; yet she would not smile,
Though he call’d her the name that was fondest erewhile.
He and she; and she did not move
To any one passionate whisper of love.
Then he said, “Cold lips! and breast without breath!
Is there no voice? – no language of death
“Dumb to the ear and still to the sense,
But to heart and to soul distinct, – intense?
“See, now, – I listen with soul, not ear —
What was the secret of dying, Dear?
“Was it the infinite wonder of all,
That you ever could let life’s flower fall?
“Or was it a greater marvel to feel
The perfect calm o’er the agony steal?
“Was the miracle greatest to find how deep,
Beyond all dreams, sank downward that sleep?
“Did life roll backward its record, Dear,
And show, as they say it does, past things clear?
“And was it the innermost heart of the bliss
To find out so what a wisdom love is?
“Oh, perfect Dead! oh, Dead most dear,
I hold the breath of my soul to hear;
“I listen – as deep as to horrible hell,
As high as to heaven! – and you do not tell!
“There must be pleasures in dying, Sweet,
To make you so placid from head to feet!
“I would tell you, Darling, if I were dead,
And ’twere your hot tears upon my brow shed.
“I would say, though the angel of death had laid
His sword on my lips to keep it unsaid.
“You should not ask, vainly, with streaming eyes,
Which in Death’s touch was the chiefest surprise;
“The very strangest and suddenest thing
Of all the surprises that dying must bring.”
* * * *
Ah! foolish world! Oh! most kind Dead!
Though he told me, who will believe it was said?
Who will believe that he heard her say,
With the soft rich voice, in the dear old way: —
“The utmost wonder is this, – I hear,
And see you, and love you, and kiss you, Dear;
“I can speak now you listen with soul, not ear;
If your soul could see, it would all be clear
“What a strange delicious amazement is Death,
To be without body and breathe without breath.
“I should laugh for joy if you did not cry;
Oh, listen! Love lasts! – Love never will die.
“I am only your Angel who was your Bride;
And I see, that though dead, I have never died.”
THE GLOAMING
The gloaming! the gloaming! “What is the gloaming?” was asked by some honourable member of this honourable Society, when the word was chosen a month ago. “Twilight,” was promptly answered by another honourable member! And although the gloaming is undoubtedly twilight, is twilight as undoubtedly the gloaming? – the gloaming of Burns, of Scott, the gloaming so often referred to in our old Northern minstrelsy? The City clerk on the knife-board of his familiar “bus,” soothing himself with a fragrant Pickwick, after his ten hours’ labour in that turmoil and eddy of restless humanity – the City – may see, as he rolls westward, the sun slowly sinking and setting in its fiery grandeur behind the Marble Arch. He may see the shades of evening stealing over the Park and the Bayswater Road, and darkness settling softly over gentle Notting Hill; and he may see, if there be no fog, or not too much smoke in the atmosphere to prevent astronomical observations, the stars stealing out one by one in the Heavens above him, as the gas-lamps are being lit in the streets around him; but would that observant youth on his knife-board, with his Pickwick, amidst the lamp-lights, in the roar of London, be justified in describing what he had seen as “the gloaming?” I think not. Is not the gloaming twilight only in certain localities, and under certain conditions? Is not the gloaming chiefly confined to the North country, or to mountainous districts? It is difficult to say where the gloaming shall be called gloaming no more, and where twilight is just simple twilight, and no gloaming; but surely there lives not the man who will assert that he has seen a real gloaming effect in the Tottenham Court Road, for instance!
Can it be applied to eventide in the flat fens of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire? Does the gloaming ever fall on the manufacturing districts of Yorkshire – Leeds, Sheffield, Huddersfield? Twilight in the Potteries is surely twilight and no gloaming. May not, are not the limits within which the latter word may be used as aptly describing eventide, be the limits within which our old balladry sprung and flourished? May not, are not the limits within which the word is wholly inapplicable to describe the close of day, be the limits within which the love of song was not so strongly developed – where external nature did not, and does not suggest song, or poetry to the mind? Well, that definition is quite enough for the present day, in which “hard and fast lines” are at a discount! But there is still that awkward question, “What is the gloaming?” And what is there in the gloaming that distinguishes it from that which is twilight merely? To answer that with any hope of conveying any sense of the difference which undoubtedly does exist, is a matter which is beyond the capacity of any one not being a Ruskin. As to define the gloaming is beyond the powers of ordinary mortals, and as ostracism is threatened if I do not do something – as I am writing in terrorem, and to save my pen-and-pencil existence, which is hanging on this slender thread – I will, in default of being able to do better, give my own experiences of a real “GLOAMING.”
Time of year – the end of August. Locality, not the Tottenham Court Road, but one of the northernmost points of the Northumberland border – a wild, rough, hard land – the fighting ground, for centuries upon centuries, first of the old Romans, and then of our own border laddies, who held it against the “rieving Scots” – a land over which the famous Sixth Legion has marched – a land which has seen Hotspur fight and Douglas fall – a land where almost every hillside and burn has its legend and ballad – a land on which one would reasonably expect to see the gloaming, as distinguished from twilight, fall! I had had ten days walking after wild grouse – tramping through the heather, generally dripping wet, for the Scotch mist did not observe or keep the border line, worse luck to it. At last a fine day, and a long tramp on the moors. At the close of it, having first walked enough over the soft moss and young heather to make me exult in the grand condition for exercise which ten days’ hill air will give, I separated from my party to try for a snipe down by a little tarn, lying in the midst of a “faded bent” in the moor, intending to tramp home afterwards in my own company – and in my own company it was that I had full opportunity of studying the effect of the gloaming.
The sun was getting low as I separated from my party and walked up the side of a long hill covered with old heather, moss, patches of grass, patches of reeds, and bogs. It was a glorious scene! A sea of moorland – wave over wave of undulating hill – rolled from me northward to the foot of old Cheviot, whose long back, some twenty miles away, was lit up by the brilliant sinking sun so clearly that I could distinguish the gullies and inequalities in its time-honoured old sides. Wave over wave, southward and westward, rolled those same moorland hills from my feet, seemingly into the still more distant hills of Cumberland, and from north to south, east to west, was a sea of purple heather in its fullest bloom, lit up by the golden floods of light of the setting sun. In another five minutes the sun had disappeared, and I was down by the side of the little Tarn. Already the air, always fresh on the hills, became fresher; the golden light was dying out of the sky; the blue of the Heaven above me was darkening, the hills, a mass of purple sheen so few minutes ago, stood out sharp and black against the sky; and so I started on my long tramp home, watching the growth of the “gloaming.” There was still the heather. I was still tramping through it, but its colour was gone. It was now an expanse of purple blackness. More intensely dark became the blue of the sky above me as the red streaks, still hovering over the place where the sun had dipped, faded. Gradually, imperceptibly was darkness spreading over everything; and as the darkness spread, the stillness and sweetness of the “gloaming” made itself felt. The stillness and freshness of the air, the mysterious blackness of the hills; the startling white flashes of the little pools, in the moors, looking as though they had absorbed light from somewhere, and were loth to part with it; the faintly reflected colours of the fading sky given back by the burns and streamlets which crossed my path, the whispering of the reeds and long grass; the great grey boulders looming here and there through the dark heather and bracken – boulders behind which at that hour one could not help believing that Kelpies and Pixies were hiding, and might dart out at any moment for some Tam-o’-Shanter frolic over the moor – and the soft springy moss, grass, and heather, still under my feet deadening all the sound of my tread. Light dying, fading, and darkness, a rich purple darkness, spreading; and everywhere the scent of heather bloom and stillness and freshness – freshness indescribable, a stillness only broken by the call here and there of the scattered grouse; or the soft rush of wings and whistling of golden plover far away over head; or the cry of the lapwing – or the bark miles away of a collie dog; or the dripping and murmuring and bubbling of the little burns in the gullies!
Light still dying away! What was left only “dealt a doubtful sense of things not so much seen as felt.” And then it was that I realized what Robert Burns had sung: —
“Gie me the hour o’ gloamin grey,
For it mak’s my heart sae cheery O.”
SKETCHES
Sketches of life upon the slabs of death
Our loving hand on living stone indites:
Sketches of death upon the screens of life
Time, the great limner, for a warning writes.
Sketches of joy upon the face of sorrow,
Still credulous, our aching fingers trace:
Time steals the pencil, and with bitter scorn,
Sketches old sorrow on our young joy’s face.
E’en so our sketch of life is framed and fashion’d;
In vain with glowing touches we begin —
By day we work upon the light and colour,
Time comes by night and puts the shadows in.
SKETCHES.
A CONVERSATION.
KATEY
“There! I have finished my sketch of the sloping field, and the misty strip of woodland above, in its autumn dress, by putting you in in the foreground, the only living thing in my misty-autumn picture; though, after all, you don’t look much more than a brown spot on the green, with your brown hat and skirt and your old brown book. I am much obliged to it for keeping you still so long this misty morning. What is there in it?”
“Sketches,” I answered. “Misty sketches like this of yours.” And I stretched out my hand for my cousin’s drawing, while she looked over my shoulder down on to the volume on my knee and uttered an exclamation of surprise when her eye fell on nothing but black letters on a damp spotted yellow page. “‘Treating of the four complexions, into which men are bound during their sojourn in their earthly houses,’” she read aloud; “what does it mean? Let me look on. ‘Of those that draw their complexion from the dark and melancholy earth. Of those who take their complexion from the friendly air. Of those who are complexioned after the manner of fire. Of those who partake of the nature of the subtle and yielding water;’ who writes this queer stuff; is it sense or nonsense?” I held up the book that she might read the faded gilt letters on its wormeaten leather back. “Letters of Jacob Böhme to John Schauffman and others,” she read. “Oh!” – rather a doubtful “oh!” it was, as if the name did not settle the question about sense or nonsense as completely as she had expected it would.
“This is rather a rare book I flatter myself,” I went on. “I bought it at a book-stall because it looked so odd and old, and found to my great joy that it was a miscellaneous collection of Jacob Böhme’s letters, on all sorts of subjects; the four that I have been reading this morning about the four different temperaments, or, as he calls it, complexions into which men may be divided, come in oddly enough among much more mystical and transcendental matter. They are, as I said, misty sketches of character, but I think they show that the dreamy old cobbler knew something about his fellow-men.”
K. “What are Jacob Böhme’s writings like?”
“Oh, I can’t tell you that, I can only tell you what it makes one feel like to read them. Something, as we should feel, you and I, if we climbed up to that peak above the wood there, and looked down on the mist in the valley now the sun is gilding it. We should have a vague feeling of having got up on to a height, and perceived something glorious; but we should not be able to give much account of what we had seen when we came down.”
K. “But I hope you will be able to give me an account of what you have been reading to-day. I want you to explain to me about the four complexions as we walk home.”
“Well, I will try; these four letters have something in them that one can get hold of and venture to put into fresh words. You must remember, to begin with, that Böhme still held to there being only four elements – earth, air, fire, and water – and thought that everything, our bodies included, was made up of various proportions of these elemental substances – the soul, a pure indivisible essence, he thinks of as living imprisoned in these compound bodies. Shadowed and clouded and hindered in its work by the material form that shuts it in from the true fount of being; individualizing it and debasing it at the same time. Character, according to him, depends upon the element that preponderates in the composition of our bodies; our souls work through it and are more or less free. His theory of the causes of differences of character may be ever so foolish, yet I think the classification he draws from it is interesting, and does somehow or other help us to understand ourselves and our fellow-creatures a little better.”
K. “Let me see, he divides people into earth, air, fire, and water people. What sort of character does he suppose the earth element colours the soul with?”
“You are quite right to use the word colour, Böhme thinks of the complexion, or, as we should say, the humour of a person, as of an independent atmosphere through which the soul works, but which is no part of it. He speaks of souls shut up in the dark and melancholy earth element; these are the silent, sensitive, brooding people, who find it very difficult either to give out or receive impressions to or from their fellow-creatures. They are shut up, and as the earth (so at least Böhme says) draws a great deal more heat and light from the sun than it ever gives back, and darkly absorbs and stores up heat within itself, so these earth men and women, separated from their fellows, have the power of drawing great enlightenment and deep warmth of love direct from the spiritual source of light and love. Religious enthusiasts are all of this class; Böhme was an earth person himself, he says so; so was Dante and John Bunyan, and all the other people one reads of who have had terrible experiences in the depths of their own souls and ecstatic visions to comfort them. Böhme says that the very best and the very worst people are those shut in by the earth. They are the most individual, the most thoroughly separated; if conquering this hindrance, they re-absorb the Divine into themselves by direct vision; they rise to heights of wisdom, love, and self-sacrifice that no other souls can reach; but if by pride and self-will they cut themselves from spiritual influences, they remain solitary, dark, hungry, always striving vainly to extract the light and warmth they want from some one or two of their fellow-creatures, and being constantly disappointed, because, not having the power of ray-ing out love, they can rarely attract it. They are eaten up by a sad dark egotism. If they have a great deal of intellect they throw themselves vehemently into some one pursuit or study, and become great but never happy.”
K. “I am thankful to say I don’t know any earth people.”
“Nor do I, pure earth, but I think I have come across one or two with a touch of earth in their temperaments. The air folk are much more common. They are the eager inquisitive people, who want to get into everything and understand everything, just as the air pervades and permeates all creation. Great lovers of knowledge and scientific observers must always be air people. Böhme thinks that in spite of their not being generally very spiritual, they have the best chance of getting to heaven, because of all classes they have most sympathy and are least shut up in themselves, getting everywhere, like their element the air: they get into the souls of others and understand them and live in them. Their influence is of a very peculiar kind; not being very individual, they don’t impress the people round them with a strong sense of their personality; they are not loved passionately, and they don’t love passionately, but people turn to them to be understood and helped, and they are always benevolently ready to understand and help. They are satisfied that their influence should be breathed like the air, without being more recognized than the air: Shakespeare was, I expect, a typical air man. He had been everywhere, into all sorts of souls, peering about, and understanding them all, and how little any one seems to have known about himself! He was separated as little as possible from the universal fount of Being.”
K. “Socrates was an air man too I suppose? Your air people would be all philosophers.”
“More or less lovers of knowledge they must be; but remember that temperament does not affect the quality of the soul itself, it is only more or less of a hindrance. The peculiar faults of air people are, as you will imagine, fickleness and coldness; their sympathy partakes of the nature of curiosity, and they easily adapt themselves to changes of circumstance; they can as easily live in one person as in another, and the love of knowledge in little souls would degenerate into restless curiosity and fussiness.”
K. “Would not Goethe be as good a type of the air temperament as Shakespeare? He certainly had the besetting faults of the complexion, fickleness and coldness.”
“Yes, but the great influence he exercised over his contemporaries, points to his drawing something too from the fire nature.”
K. “Those complexioned after the manner of the fire are, I suppose, the warm-hearted, affectionate souls?”
“Not at all; Böhme would not have consented to lay hold of such an obvious analogy. He dives deeper into fire characteristics than to think chiefly of its warmth. It is above all a consuming element; it takes substances of all kinds and transmutes them into itself, a greedy devourer, reckless of the value of what it takes, intent only on increasing and maintaining itself. The fire people are the ambitious conquerors and rulers of the world, who by the strength and attractive warmth of their own natures force others to bend to them and become absorbed in their projects. They are in reality as great egotists as the earth people, only they don’t keep their egotism at smouldering fever heat in their own hearts; they let it blaze forth into a living flame, which draws weaker natures to be consumed in it, or at least forces them to live only in its heat and light. Napoleon Bonaparte, I think, might stand for a typical fire man. In women the fire nature shows rather differently: pure fire women have acted very conspicuous parts in the world’s history, and generally very disastrous ones, they are the women who inspire great passions and feel very little themselves. They draw others to them for the sake of homage to add to their own light. Madame de Chevreuse and Madame de Longueville must have been pure fire women, I should say. Don’t suppose, however, that the fire, more than any other temperament, secures greatness or real superiority; it enables those who follow its complexion to impress themselves more on other people than the air spirits can, but their influence may be only temporary, and it may be very disagreeable, and in the end repelling. Don’t you know people, both men and women, who have a mysterious way of making their will felt, and who always count for something in whatever society they are in as long as they are present, but who leave no permanent impression? Those I suppose would be, according to Böhme, stupid souls acting through the fire temperament. The influence of the air souls, inconspicuous as it is, is more permanent. Like the air it nourishes and changes without destroying; air people give more than they take. Fire people take more than they give.”
K. “And now what are the water followers? I hope we are coming to some amiable, pleasant people at last, for you have not described anything very attractive yet.”
“I am afraid you will like the water complexion least of all, and be obliged to acknowledge too that ‘the subtle and yielding water’ has more followers than any of the other elements. The water element has a sort of resemblance to the air element; it mimics it without having its power. Water people are that large majority of mankind who have too weak a hold on life to be anything very distinctive of themselves. They simulate living and thinking, rather than really think and live. Just as water receives impressions in itself that it cannot clasp and hold, that seem to be part of it and are not. They are easily influenced by others – by air people for example; but they only image their thoughts in themselves. They look like them when they are with them, and when the influence is removed they are empty like a lake when a veil of clouds is drawn over the sky. The distinctive mark of water people is that they are self-conscious, they are always thinking of themselves, because they live a sort of double life – occupied not only with what they are doing but with the thought that they actually are doing it. Unconsciously they are continually acting a part. They have notions about themselves and act up to them. They see themselves in different lights, and everything else as it concerns themselves. Seeing not the real thing, but the thing reflected in themselves. You must know such people, though they are difficult to describe, and I cannot just now think of any historical typical water person to help out my description. Perhaps Napoleon the Third would do. I think he must be what Böhme meant by ‘those who partake of the nature of the subtle and yielding nature;’ and, by the way, Böhme does not describe the water people as really yielding; on the contrary, he says they are very persistent. In a slow, obstinate way, by seeming to yield and always returning to the point from which they had been diverging (always finding their own level) they have more power than the followers of any of the other elements.”