THE MARRIAGE MAKER 147 



that at the age of "sweet seventeen" she was still not 

 affianced to anyone. 



Wei Ku knew all this, and thought to himself "the 

 Prefect might spare himself the trouble; that girl is not for 

 me, — no such luck ! I quite believe that on the day the 

 child in the tou-ju shop was slain, that old fellow in the 

 moonlight, to pay me o<ut, cut my silken cord and condemned 

 me to die without descendant to tend my tomb. Wei Ku 

 often realized how cruel it was to kill that helpless innocent 

 babe, and he never ceased to repent the guilty part he took 

 in that wicked episode. It was the one ugly blot in his 

 otherwise blameless life. After the many failures to match 

 his "eight characters," he had given up hope of ever 

 marrying. 



The Prefect was far more sanguine. He knew his 

 daughter's "eight characters" by heart, and also remembered 

 in what respects they had been found wanting. When he 

 received Wei Ku's "characters" he saw at a glance that they 

 were just the reverse of his daughter's — deficient in those 

 very conditions in which that young lady's were excessive, 

 and vice versa. 



Without saying a word, he nodded knowingly and sent 

 both sets of "characters" to a famous astrologer with the 

 request that the two> horoscopes be cast with utmost care, 

 and that a chart be drawn up to show how each stood in 

 relation to the other. 



The astrologer, after an exhaustive investigation, 

 declared that the conditions were strikingly abnormal in 

 both cases. Such marked degrees of excessiveness in some 

 essentials and incompleteness in others, he said he had never 

 seen before in any two horoscopes during the whole of his 

 professional career. He showed that the serious shortcom- 

 ings in the one, were so nicely compensated for by the 

 extraordinary excessiveness in the other, that obviously the 

 two sets of characters were exact counterparts. The in- 

 equalities of the Yin and the Yang elements, or "Dual 

 Principles in Nature," 1 as existing in both were so peculiar, 

 that they could not be adjusted except by combining and 

 dovetailing the two horoscopes. The match was perfect. 

 Conjointly the signs and symbols stood for perfect harmony 

 which could conduce to nothing but happiness and good luck 

 in the fullest measure for the parties concerned. In the 



1 An inevitable duallism bisects nature, so that each thing is a 

 half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as, spirit, matter; 

 man, woman; odd, even; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, under; 

 mot'on, rest; yea, nay. — "Compensation." — R. W. Emerson. 



