Then there is the vested interest aspect of fengshui. The innovations of the West strike at the fortune-telling profession; they threaten a livelihood in a country where the struggle for existence is something more than keen. is calling is not unnaturally a popular one; the capital outlay is small and the acquisition of a working knowledge of the hypberbole and solemn nonsense of the sacred books lays no great strain on the Chinese mind, nurtured as it is on mean-ingles memorization. There are, of course, men with a special susceptibility for the determination of feng shut and such are known as the geomancers, the heads of this profession of deception. These lucky ones embrace every branch of the art, from casting a horoscope to fixing the height, site and orientation of a pagoda. Often they are retained as perpetual conjsultants by. a family, sometimes they are called upon to devote the whole of their time to the spiritual care of a clan. Fees are dependent on the means of the client and the reputation of the oracle, but there is room for all, the great, and the small fry practising only the minor branches of the black art, such is the quest for fortune's favour. Like the blind, and the drone priest, the man who can read the future goes mocked, but -never wants for a meal or a place on the kang.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.