Wherein, too, we had our symbols:--the Dragon, the Sky-wanderer, with something heavenly to say; but alas! the Dragon had been little visible in our skies of Chu Hia these many years or centuries;--the Tiger, brute muscularity, lithe terrible limbs, fearful claws and teeth,--we knew him much better! This, heaven knew, was the day of the Tiger of earthly strength and passions; were there not those three great tigers up north, Ts'in, Tsin, and Ts'i; and as many more southward; and all hungry and strong?--And also, some little less thought of perhaps, the Phoenix, Secular Bird, that bums itself at the end of each cycle, and arises from its ashes young and dazzling again: the Phoenix --but little thought of, these days; for was not the world old and outworn, and toppling down towards a final crash? The days of Chu Hia were gone, its future all in the long past; no one dared dream of a time when there should be something better than Yen diddling Lu, or Ts'u beating Ts'i at a good set-to with these new sixty-warrior-holding chariots. Who should think of the Phoenix--and of a new age to come when there should be no more Yen and Lu and Chow and Tsin and Ts'in, but one broad and mighty realm, a Middle, a Celestial Kingdom,--such a Chu Hia as time had no memory of;--to whose throne the Hun himself should bow, or whose hosts should drive him out of Asia;--a Chu Hia to whom tribute should come from the uttermost ends of the earth? Who should dream of the Secular Bird now,-- as improbable a creature, in these dark days of the Tiger, as that old long-lost Sky-wanderer the Dragon himself? Let be; let three little centuries pass; let the funeral pyre but be kindled, and quite burn itself out; and let the ashes grow cold-- And behold you now, this Phoenix of the World, bright and dazzling, rising up from them! Behold you now this same Black-haired People, young, strong, vigorous, gleaming with all the rainbow hues of romance and imagination; conquering and creative, and soon to strew the jewels of faerie over all the Eastern World. . . .