| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grande Breteche by Honore de Balzac: Merret, and seemed unlikely to live through the night. It was about
eleven when I reached the chateau. I went up the great staircase.
After crossing some large, lofty, dark rooms, diabolically cold and
damp, I reached the state bedroom where the Countess lay. From the
rumors that were current concerning this lady (monsieur, I should
never end if I were to repeat all the tales that were told about her),
I had imagined her a coquette. Imagine, then, that I had great
difficulty in seeing her in the great bed where she was lying. To be
sure, to light this enormous room, with old-fashioned heavy cornices,
and so thick with dust that merely to see it was enough to make you
sneeze, she had only an old Argand lamp. Ah! but you have not been to
La Grande Breteche |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were
so very human in their protests--and so perfectly within their rights!
They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury,
as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded,
impersonal way, without a pretense of apology, without the homage of
a tear. Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughtering
machine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some horrible crime
committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and
of memory.
One could not stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical,
without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog
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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 The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: sprung up in his bosom a sort of angry hope. 'Let me see,' he
thought. 'Julia's got rid of--, there's nothing to connect me
with that beast Forsyth; the men were all drunk, and (what's
better) they've been all discharged. O, come, I think this is
another case of moral courage! I'll deny all knowledge of the
thing.'
A moment more, and he stood again before the Hercules, his lips
sternly compressed, the coal-axe and the meat-cleaver under his
arm. The next, he had fallen upon the packing-case. This had been
already seriously undermined by the operations of Gideon; a few
well-directed blows, and it already quaked and gaped; yet a few
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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 Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: prescription is welcome as a brother. But this alchemy is, you
know, only the material counterpart of a poet's craving for
Beauty, the eternal Beauty. 'The makers of gold and the makers
of verse,' they are the twin creators that sway the world's
secret desire for mystery; and what in my father is the genius of
curiosity--the very essence of all scientific genius--in me is
the desire for beauty. Do you remember Pater's phrase about
Leonardo da Vinci, 'curiosity and the desire of beauty'?"
It was the desire of beauty that made her a poet; her "nerves of
delight" were always quivering at the contact of beauty. To
those who knew her in England, all the life of the tiny figure
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