| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: homogeneous, is really spent in this way. Brothers are sent to a
distance, busy with their own careers, their own advancement,
occupied, perhaps, about the good of the country; the sisters are
engrossed in a round of other interests. All the members of such a
family live disunited, forgetting one another, bound together only by
some feeble tie of memory, until, perhaps, a sentiment of pride or
self-interest either joins them or separates them in heart as they
already are in fact. Modern laws, by multiplying the family by the
family, has created a great evil,--namely, individualism.
In the depths of this solitude where their girlhood was spent,
Angelique and Eugenie seldom saw their father, and when he did enter
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: he had studied forensic eloquence in a good school. In this
predicament I could think of nothing more ingenious than to burst
out of the house, under the pretext of an ungovernable rage. It
was certainly not very ingenious - it was elementary, but I had no
choice.
'You white-livered dog!' I broke out. 'Do you dare to tell me
you're an Englishman, and won't fight? But I'll stand no more of
this! I leave this place, where I've been insulted! Here! what's
to pay? Pay yourself!' I went on, offering the landlord a handful
of silver, 'and give me back my bank-note!'
The landlord, following his usual policy of obliging everybody,
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: lights. I tried the small entry door there, which opened on the
veranda, and examined the windows. Everything was secure, and
Liddy, a little less nervous now, had just pointed out to me the
disgracefully dusty condition of the hard-wood floor, when
suddenly the lights went out. We waited a moment; I think Liddy
was stunned with fright, or she would have screamed. And then I
clutched her by the arm and pointed to one of the windows opening
on the porch. The sudden change threw the window into relief, an
oblong of grayish light, and showed us a figure standing close,
peering in. As I looked it darted across the veranda and out of
sight in the darkness.
The Circular Staircase |
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 Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War by Frederick A. Talbot: antagonists, and now are emulating their tactics, but owing to
their imperfect training and knowledge the results they achieve
appear to be negligible.
The dirigible still remains an unknown quantity in these
activities, although strange to relate, in the early days of the
war, the work accomplished by the British craft, despite their
comparatively low speed and small dimensions, excelled in value
that achieved by the warplanes. This was particularly noticeable
in matters pertaining to reconnaissance, more especially at
night, when the British vessels often remained for hours together
in the air, manoeuvring over the hostile lines, and gathering
|
