| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: him, but she wished to show him, and I seemed to read that if she
could treat him as a trophy her affairs were rather at the ebb.
True there always hung from her belt a promiscuous fringe of
scalps. Much at any rate would have come and gone since our
separation in July. She had spent four months abroad, where, on
Swiss and Italian lakes, in German cities, in the French capital,
many accidents might have happened.
CHAPTER V
I had been again with my mother, but except Mrs. Meldrum and the
gleam of France had not found at Folkestone my old resources and
pastimes. Mrs. Meldrum, much edified by my report of the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: But Lilia pleased me, for she took no part
In our dispute: the sequel of the tale
Had touched her; and she sat, she plucked the grass,
She flung it from her, thinking: last, she fixt
A showery glance upon her aunt, and said,
'You--tell us what we are' who might have told,
For she was crammed with theories out of books,
But that there rose a shout: the gates were closed
At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now,
To take their leave, about the garden rails.
So I and some went out to these: we climbed
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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 Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: beautiful than perfection. Like the flaws of an old marble. If
you talk of your faults, I shall talk of your splendors."
"I do want to tell you things, nevertheless."
"We'll have, thank God! ten myriad days to tell each other
things. When I think of it--"
"But these are things I want to tell you now!"
"I made a little song of it. Let me say it to you. I've no name
for it yet. Epithalamy might do.
"Like him who stood on Darien
I view uncharted sea
Ten thousand days, ten thousand nights
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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 The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: catch emotions, quick to transmit them. Of all waves of feeling,
this is not the least true of religious ones, that, starting from
their birthplace, pass out to stir others, who have but humanity in
common with those who professed them first. Like the ripples in the
pool, they leave their initial converts to sink back again into
comparative quiescence, as they advance to throw into sudden tremors
hordes of outer barbarians. In both of the great religions in
question this wave propagation has been most marked, only the
direction it took differed. Christianity went westward; Buddhism
travelled east. Proselytes in Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy find
counterparts in Eastern India, Burmah, and Thibet. Eventually the
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