| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: "I have been almost wild, sweetheart,"--Halsey's voice. "Why
didn't you trust me, and send for me before?"
"It was because I couldn't trust myself," she said in a low tone.
"I am too weak to struggle to-day; oh, Halsey, how I have wanted
to see you!"
There was something I did not hear, then Halsey again.
"We could go away," he was saying. "What does it matter about
any one in the world but just the two of us? To be always
together, like this, hand in hand; Louise--don't tell me it isn't
going to be. I won't believe you."
"You don't know; you don't know," Louise repeated dully.
The Circular Staircase |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: Et le soleil dessechez et noirciz;
Pies, corbeaulx, nous ont les yeux cavez,
Et arrachez la barbe et les sourcilz.
Jamais, nul temps, nous ne sommes rassis;
Puis ca, puis la, comme le vent varie,
A son plaisir sans cesser nous charie,
Plus becquetez d'oiscaulx que dez a couldre.
Ne soyez donc de nostre confrairie,
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous vueille absouldre."
Here is some genuine thieves' literature after so much that
was spurious; sharp as an etching, written with a shuddering
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Middlemarch by George Eliot: of your sex is its capability of an ardent self-sacrificing affection,
and herein we see its fitness to round and complete the existence
of our own. Hitherto I have known few pleasures save of the severer
kind: my satisfactions have been those of the solitary student.
I have been little disposed to gather flowers that would wither
in my hand, but now I shall pluck them with eagerness, to place
them in your bosom."
No speech could have been more thoroughly honest in its intention:
the frigid rhetoric at the end was as sincere as the bark of a dog,
or the cawing of an amorous rook. Would it not be rash to conclude
that there was no passion behind those sonnets to Delia which strike
Middlemarch |
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 Falk by Joseph Conrad: two women, who would let their sewing sink slowly
on their laps. Meantime I sat before a glass of
Hermann's beer, trying to look modest. Mrs. Her-
mann would glance at me quickly, emit slight
"Ach's!" The girl never made a sound. Never.
But she too would sometimes raise her pale eyes to
look at me in her unseeing gentle way. Her glance
was by no means stupid; it beamed out soft and dif-
fuse as the moon beams upon a landscape--quite
differently from the scrutinising inspection of the
stars. You were drowned in it, and imagined your-
Falk |
