| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Crisis in Russia by Arthur Ransome: the Centre in this way. When the train is on a voyage
telegrams announce its arrival beforehand, so that the local
Soviets can make full use of its advantages, arranging meetings,
kinematograph shows, lectures. It arrives, this amazing
picture train, and proceeds to publish and distribute its
newspapers, sell its books (the bookshop, they tell me, is
literally stormed at every stopping place), send books and
posters for forty versts on either side of the line with the
motor-cars which it carries with it, and enliven the
population with its kinematograph.
I doubt if a more effective instrument of propaganda has
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: any incongruity in the use of the war conch for the peaceful
invitation to prayer. In response to its summons the white members
of the family took their usual places in one end of the large hall,
while the Samoans - men, women, and children - trooped in through
all the open doors, some carrying lanterns if the evening were
dark, all moving quietly and dropping with Samoan decorum in a wide
semicircle on the floor beneath a great lamp that hung from the
ceiling. The service began by my son reading a chapter from the
Samoan Bible, Tusitala following with a prayer in English,
sometimes impromptu, but more often from the notes in this little
book, interpolating or changing with the circumstance of the day.
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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 A Distinguished Provincial at Paris by Honore de Balzac: "Let us go by way of your tailor's, dear boy, and tell him to be quick
with your clothes, or try them on if they are ready. If you are going
to your fine ladies' houses, you shall eclipse that monster of a de
Marsay and young Rastignac and any Ajuda-Pinto or Maxime de Trailles
or Vandenesse of them all. Remember that your mistress is Coralie! But
you will not play me any tricks, eh?"
Two days afterwards, on the eve of the supper-party at Coralie's
house, there was a new play at the Ambigu, and it fell to Lucien to
write the dramatic criticism. Lucien and Coralie walked together after
dinner from the Rue de Vendome to the Panorama-Dramatique, going along
the Cafe Turc side of the Boulevard du Temple, a lounge much
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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 Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: pronunciation, but she had been irritated by newspaper paragraphs
--nobody could ever find out who wrote them and nobody could
ever find out who showed them to the old lady--anticipating his
elevation. She had gone very red in the face and stiffened in the
Guelphic manner whenever Scrope was mentioned, and so a rich
harvest of spiritual life had remained untilled for some months.
Likeman had brought her round.
It seemed arguable that Scrope owed some explanation to Likeman
before he came to any open breach with the Establishment.
He found Likeman perceptibly older and more shrivelled on
account of the war, but still as sweet and lucid and subtle as
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