"This is all very well," smiled Hsiang-yün. "The only thing is what kind of empty words will, I wonder, be best to use? Just you first think of one and let me see."
Pao-ch'ai plunged in thought for a time, after which she laughingly remarked: "Dream of chrysanthemums is good."
"It's positively good!" Hsiang-yün smiled. "I've also got one: 'the Chrysanthemum shadow,' will that do?"
"Well enough," Pao-ch'ai answered, "the only objection is that people have written on it; yet if the themes are to be many, we might throw this in. I've got another one too!"
"Be quick, and tell it!" Hsiang-yün urged.
"What do you say to 'ask the Chrysanthemums?'" Pao-ch'ai observed.
Hsiang-yün clapped her hand on the table. "Capital," she cried. "I've thought of one also." She then quickly continued, "It is, search for chrysanthemums; what's your idea about it?"
Pao-ch'ai thought that too would do very well. "Let's choose ten of them first," she next proposed; "and afterwards note them down!"
While talking, they rubbed the ink and moistened the pens. These preparations over, Hsiang-yün began to write, while Pao-ch'ai enumerated the themes. In a short time, they got ten of them.
"Ten don't form a set," Hsiang-yün went on to smilingly suggest, after reading them over. "We'd better complete them by raising their number to twelve; they'll then also be on the same footing as people's pictures and books."
Hearing this proposal, Pao-ch'ai devised another couple of themes, thus bringing them to a dozen. "Well, since we've got so far," she pursued, "let's go one step further and copy them out in their proper order, putting those that are first, first; and those that come last, last."
"It would be still better like that," Hsiang-yün acquiesced, "as we'll be able to make up a 'chrysanthemum book.'"
"The first stanza should be: 'Longing for chrysanthemums,'" Pao-chai said, "and as one cannot get them by wishing, and has, in consequence, to search for them, the second should be 'searching for chrysanthemums.' After due search, one finds them, and plants them, so the third must be: 'planting chrysanthemums.' After they've been planted, they, blossom, and one faces them and enjoys them, so the fourth should be 'facing the chrysanthemums.' By facing them, one derives such excessive delight that one plucks them and brings them in and puts them in vases for one's own delectation, so the fifth must be 'placing chrysanthemums in vases.' If no verses are sung in their praise, after they've been placed in vases, it's tantamount to seeing no point of beauty in chrysanthemums, so the sixth must be 'sing about chrysanthemums.' After making them the burden of one's song, one can't help representing them in pictures. The seventh place should therefore be conceded to 'drawing chrysanthemums.' Seeing that in spite of all the labour bestowed on the drawing of chrysanthemums, the fine traits there may be about them are not yet, in fact, apparent, one impulsively tries to find them out by inquiries, so the eighth should be 'asking the chrysanthemums.' As any perception, which the chrysanthemums might display in fathoming the questions set would help to make the inquirer immoderately happy, the ninth must be 'pinning the chrysanthemums in the hair.' And as after everything has been accomplished, that comes within the sphere of man, there will remain still some chrysanthemums about which something could be written, two stanzas on the 'shadow of the chrysanthemums,' and the 'dream about chrysanthemums' must be tagged on as numbers ten and eleven. While the last section should be 'the withering of the chrysanthemums' so as to bring to a close the sentiments expressed in the foregoing subjects. In this wise the fine scenery and fine doings of the third part of autumn, will both alike be included in our themes."