| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: as though another candle had been lighted. We need not care
whether they could prove the forty-seventh proposition; they
do a better thing than that, they practically demonstrate the
great Theorem of the Liveableness of Life. Consequently, if a
person cannot be happy without remaining idle, idle he should
remain. It is a revolutionary precept; but thanks to hunger
and the workhouse, one not easily to be abused; and within
practical limits, it is one of the most incontestable truths
in the whole Body of Morality. Look at one of your
industrious fellows for a moment, I beseech you. He sows
hurry and reaps indigestion; he puts a vast deal of activity
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: consisted in light talk of books and theaters.
Greba Eltham, the clergyman's daughter, was a charming young hostess,
and she, with Vernon Denby, Mr. Eltham's nephew, completed the party.
No doubt the girl's presence, in part, at any rate, led us to refrain
from the subject uppermost in our minds.
These little pools of calm dotted along the torrential course of
the circumstances which were bearing my friend and me onward to unknown
issues form pleasant, sunny spots in my dark recollections.
So I shall always remember, with pleasure, that dinner-party
at Redmoat, in the old-world dining-room; it was so very peaceful,
so almost grotesquely calm. For I, within my very bones, felt it
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
