| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: see the play, though. I knew there was a young lady in it, and
that somebody was in love with her, and she was in love with him,
and somebody (an old tutor, I believe) wanted to interfere, and,
very naturally, the young lady was too sharp for him. The play of
course ends charmingly; there is a general reconciliation, and all
concerned form a line and take each others' hands, as people always
do after they have made up their quarrels, - and then the curtain
falls, - if it does not stick, as it commonly does at private
theatrical exhibitions, in which case a boy is detailed to pull it
down, which he does, blushing violently.
Now, then, for my prologue. I am not going to change my caesuras
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: more art, as if there had been "treatment," of the consummate sort,
in his every shade and salience. The revulsion, for our friend,
had become, before he knew it, immense - this drop, in the act of
apprehension, to the sense of his adversary's inscrutable
manoeuvre. That meaning at least, while he gaped, it offered him;
for he could but gape at his other self in this other anguish, gape
as a proof that HE, standing there for the achieved, the enjoyed,
the triumphant life, couldn't be faced in his triumph. Wasn't the
proof in the splendid covering hands, strong and completely spread?
- so spread and so intentional that, in spite of a special verity
that surpassed every other, the fact that one of these hands had
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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 Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: these old people were clustered about one young one. That was it; that
was the town's ultimate tragic note: the old timber of the forest dying
and the too sparse new growth appearing scantily amid the tall, fine,
venerable, decaying trunks. It had been by no razing to the ground and
sowing with salt that the city had perished; a process less violent but
more sad had done away with it. Youth, in the wake of commerce, had ebbed
from Kings Port, had flowed out from the silent, mourning houses, and
sought life North and West, and wherever else life was to be found. Into
my revery floated a phrase from a melodious and once favorite song: O
tempo passato perche non ritorni?
And John Mayrant? Why, then, had he tarried here himself? That is a hard
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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 Turn of the Screw by Henry James: I was struck. "But of whom did you speak first?"
She looked blank, but she colored. "Why, of HIM."
"Of the master?"
"Of who else?"
There was so obviously no one else that the next moment I
had lost my impression of her having accidentally said more
than she meant; and I merely asked what I wanted to know.
"Did SHE see anything in the boy--?"
"That wasn't right? She never told me."
I had a scruple, but I overcame it. "Was she careful--particular?"
Mrs. Grose appeared to try to be conscientious.
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