| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: who had, she held, betrayed his trust by practically turning
Leveller. She was well educated, refined in her manners and
habits, skilled in etiquette to an extent irritating to the
ignorant, and gifted with a delicate complexion, pearly teeth,
and a face that would have been Grecian but for a slight upward
tilt of the nose and traces of a square, heavy type in the jaw.
Her father was a retired admiral, with sufficient influence to
have had a sinecure made by a Conservative government expressly
for the maintenance of his son pending alliance with some
heiress. Yet Gertrude remained single, and the admiral, who had
formerly spent more money than he could comfortably afford on her
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: I do not know; but to many it seemed as if the Invisible
Destruction were scattering visible seed! ... Such were the
days; and each day the terror-stricken city offered up its
hecatomb to death; and the faces of all the dead were yellow as
flame!
"DECEDE--; "DECEDEE--; "FALLECIO;"--"DIED." ... On the
door-posts, the telegraph-poles, the pillars of verandas, the
lamps,--over the government letter-boxes,--everywhere glimmered
the white annunciations of death. All the city was spotted with
them. And lime was poured into the gutters; and huge purifying
fires were kindled after sunset.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: the payment of his notes will have expired, and, his goods being
seized upon, he will become a bankrupt; and he also will return
to his father."
At the conclusion of this narrative they inquired of the third
devil how things had fared between him and Ivan.
"Well," said he, "my report is not so encouraging. The first
thing I did was to spit into his jug of quass [a sour drink made
from rye], which made him sick at his stomach. He afterward went
to plow his summer-fallow, but I made the soil so hard that the
plow could scarcely penetrate it. I thought the Fool would not
succeed, but he started to work nevertheless. Moaning with pain,
The Kreutzer Sonata |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: up material for his book (this detail had occurred to her in the
night).
It was the kind of encounter she had most dreaded; but it
proved, after all, easy enough to go through compared with those
endless hours of turning to and fro, the night before, in the
cage of her lonely room. Anything, anything, but to be
alone ....
Gradually, from the force of habit, she found herself actually
in tune with the talk of the luncheon table, interested in the
references to absent friends, the light allusions to last year's
loves and quarrels, scandals and absurdities. The women, in
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