| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: to put him at his ease. He merely sits and scowls at me. Then I show
him our manuscripts. At this he becomes really angry, and tells me
I've no business to call myself a middle-class woman. So we part in a
huff; and next time we meet, which was to-night, he walks straight up
to me, and says, 'Go to the Devil!' That's the sort of behavior my
mother complains of. I want to know, what does it mean?"
She paused and, slackening her steps, looked at the lighted train
drawing itself smoothly over Hungerford Bridge.
"It means, I should say, that he finds you chilly and unsympathetic."
Katharine laughed with round, separate notes of genuine amusement.
"It's time I jumped into a cab and hid myself in my own house," she
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Philebus by Plato: PROTARCHUS: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: Why, I mean to say, that in self-defence I may, if I like,
follow your example, and assert boldly that the two things most unlike are
most absolutely alike; and the result will be that you and I will prove
ourselves to be very tyros in the art of disputing; and the argument will
be blown away and lost. Suppose that we put back, and return to the old
position; then perhaps we may come to an understanding with one another.
PROTARCHUS: How do you mean?
SOCRATES: Shall I, Protarchus, have my own question asked of me by you?
PROTARCHUS: What question?
SOCRATES: Ask me whether wisdom and science and mind, and those other
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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 Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: fire-beams were reflected as distinctly from the steel
prongs of his fork as from her own. On going up to the
fire to throw a pitch of dead weeds upon it, she found
that he did the same on the other side. The fire flared
up, and she beheld the face of d'Urberville.
The unexpectedness of his presence, the grotesqueness
of his appearance in a gathered smockfrock, such as was
now worn only by the most old-fashioned of the
labourers, had a ghastly comicality that chilled her as
to its bearing. D'Urberville emitted a low long laugh.
"If I were inclined to joke I should say, How much this
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
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 A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: those of an Indian wigwam. A shaving-glass, suspended to the fastening
of a curtainless window, and surmounted by a rag striped by many
wipings of a razor, indicated the only sacrifices paid by Schmucke to
the Graces and society. The cat, being the feebler and protected
partner, had rather the best of the establishment; he enjoyed the
comforts of an old sofa-cushion, near which could be seen a white
china cup and plate. But what no pen can describe was the state into
which Schmucke, the cat, and the pipe, that existing trinity, had
reduced these articles. The pipe had burned the table. The cat and
Schmucke's head had greased the green Utrecht velvet of the two arm-
chairs and reduced it to a slimy texture. If it had not been for the
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