Page:The Borzoi 1920.djvu/79

CARL VAN VECHTEN but the birth of Igor Stravinsky on June 17 was pre-ordained. There have been those who have chosen this as a suitable date on which to die: Joseph Addison on June 17, 1719, and Henrietta Sontag (in Mexico), on June 17, 1854. The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on June 17, 1775, and the Battle of Waterloo on June 18 (not 1775!) so that the celebrated ball held on its eve, described so vividly in Vanity Fair fell on the seventeenth. And Abraham Lincoln was nominated on this day in 1860.

The Saints of the day bear fascinating, if somewhat unfamiliar, names: Nicander and Marcian, Saint Prior, Saint Avitus, Saint Botolph, Saint Molingus or Dairchilla. I like to think that some child carries one of these names, or that several children respectively carry them all.

The Stars are friendly. Gemini, the Twins, of the Air Triplicity, are in power. Mercury is the governing planet. The Astral Colours are Red, White, and Blue, which permit the child the choice of several patriotisms or gently dedicate him to polyglottism. The cabalistic stones of the day are blue, beryl, acquamarine, lapis lazuli, chalcydony, and sapphire.

The Twins endow those who fall under their sign with a genius for vacillation. They symbolically indicate a dual temperament, the eternal struggle between Psyche and Eros, which nowadays is of such interest to Freudian professors that these savants are said to pray many long hours each night that more children shall be born between May 20 and June 21. In the children of the Gemini one trait of character contradicts another. These lads wish to travel and they wish to stay at home. They are nervous and phlegmatic, happy and unhappy, serious and frivolous, satisfied and dissatisfied, affectionate and cold, generous and selfish. They are fond of colours and perfumes and rich foods. They delight in the Arts and Sciences, but as artists they will accomplish their best work through inspiration and not through study or