The rainbow was regarded, not as a portent of evil, but as an improper combination of the dual forces of nature,-- “_There is a rainbow in the east, And no one dares point at it,_”-- and is applied figuratively to women who form improper connections. The position of women generally seems to have been very much what it is at the present day. In an Ode which describes the completion of a palace for one of the ancient princes, we are conducted through the rooms,-- “_Here will he live, here will he sit, Here will he laugh, here will he talk,_”-- until we come to the bedchamber, where he will awake, and call upon the chief diviner to interpret his dream of bears and serpents. The interpretation (Legge) is as follows:-- “_Sons shall be born to him:-- They will be put to sleep on couches; They will be clothed in robes; They will have sceptres to play with; Their cry will be loud. They will be resplendent with red knee-covers, The future princes of the land._ “_Daughters shall be born to him:-- They will be put to sleep on the ground; They will be clothed with wrappers; They will have tiles to play with. It will be theirs neither to do wrong nor to do good. Only about the spirits and the food will they have to think, And to cause no sorrow to their parents._” The distinction thus drawn is severe enough, and it is quite unnecessary to make a comparison, as some writers on China have done, between the tile and the sceptre, as though the former were but a dirty potsherd, good enough for a girl. A tile was used in the early ages as a weight for the spindle, and is here used merely to indicate the direction which a girl’s activities should take. Women are further roughly handled in an Ode which traces the prevailing misgovernment to their interference in affairs of State and in matters which do not lie within their province:-- “_A clever man builds a city, A clever woman lays one low; With all her qualifications, that clever woman Is but an ill-omened bird. A woman with a long tongue Is a flight of steps leading to calamity; For disorder does not come from heaven, But is brought about by women. Among those who cannot be trained or taught Are women and eunuchs._”