| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: waistcoats missed. They were both here--last year.
Then the master went, and Quint was alone."
I followed, but halting a little. "Alone?"
"Alone with US." Then, as from a deeper depth, "In charge," she added.
"And what became of him?"
She hung fire so long that I was still more mystified.
"He went, too," she brought out at last.
"Went where?"
Her expression, at this, became extraordinary. "God knows where!
He died."
"Died?" I almost shrieked.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay: life. Will you not still accompany me?"
"Yes," said Tydomin, "I will follow you to the end. It is all the
more essential, because I keep on displeasing you with my remarks,
and that means I have not yet learned my lesson properly."
"Do not be humble, for humility is only self-judgment, and while we
are thinking of self, we must be neglecting some action we could be
planning or shaping in our mind."
Tydomin continued to be uneasy and preoccupied.
"Why was Maskull not in the picture?" she asked.
"You dwell on this foreboding because you imagine it is tragical.
There is nothing tragical in death, Tydomin, nor in life. There is
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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 Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: where they keep such trifles, but no one has my rose.
When my eye is dim, and my heart grows faint, and my faith in woman
flickers, and her present is an agony to me, and her future a despair, the
scent of that dead rose, withered for twelve years, comes back to me. I
know there will be spring; as surely as the birds know it when they see
above the snow two tiny, quivering green leaves. Spring cannot fail us.
There were other flowers in the box once; a bunch of white acacia flowers,
gathered by the strong hand of a man, as we passed down a village street on
a sultry afternoon, when it had rained, and the drops fell on us from the
leaves of the acacia trees. The flowers were damp; they made mildew marks
on the paper I folded them in. After many years I threw them away. There
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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 Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: at me, and I said, 'Take your paddle,' while I struck the water with
mine. Tuan, I heard him cry. I heard him cry my name twice; and I
heard voices shouting, 'Kill! Strike!' I never turned back. I heard
him calling my name again with a great shriek, as when life is going
out together with the voice--and I never turned my head. My own name!
. . . My brother! Three times he called--but I was not afraid of life.
Was she not there in that canoe? And could I not with her find a
country where death is forgotten--where death is unknown!"
The white man sat up. Arsat rose and stood, an indistinct and silent
figure above the dying embers of the fire. Over the lagoon a mist
drifting and low had crept, erasing slowly the glittering images of
Tales of Unrest |
