| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: I laughed at his counter-quotation. "You know your classics, if you don't
know Tennyson."
He, too, laughed. "Don't tell Aunt Eliza!"
"Tell her what?"
"That I didn't recognize Tennyson. My Aunt Eliza educated me--and she
thinks Tennyson about the only poet worth reading since--well, since
Byron and Sir Walter at the very latest!
Neither she nor Sir Walter come down to modern poetry--or to alcoholic
girls." His tone, on these last words, changed.
Again, as when he had said "an urgent matter," I seemed to feel hovering
above us what must be his ceaseless preoccupation; and I wondered if he
had found, upon visiting Newport, Miss Hortense sitting and calling for
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: I had lashed her myself, and was rather proud of my
handiwork, which had withstood so long the malice of
the sea. And we pumped. And there was no break in
the weather. The sea was white like a sheet of foam,
like a caldron of boiling milk; there was not a break in
the clouds, no--not the size of a man's hand--no, not
for so much as ten seconds. There was for us no sky,
there were for us no stars, no sun, no universe--nothing
but angry clouds and an infuriated sea. We pumped
watch and watch, for dear life; and it seemed to last for
months, for years, for all eternity, as though we had been
Youth |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: our societies; where, side by side with men and women who have rapidly
adapted or are so successfully seeking to adapt themselves to the new
conditions of knowledge and new conditions of life, that, were they to
reappear in future ages in more co-ordinated societies, they might perhaps
hardly appear wholly antiquated, are to be found men and women whose
social, religious, and moral ideals would not constitute them out of
harmony if returned to the primitive camps of the remote forbears of the
human race; while, between these extreme classes lies that large mass of
persons in an intermediate state of development. This diversity is bound
to cause friction and suffering in the interactions of the members of our
societies; more especially, as the individuals composing each type are not
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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 Youth by Joseph Conrad: happy unless something went wrong. He mistrusted
my youth, my common-sense, and my seamanship, and
made a point of showing it in a hundred little ways. I
dare say he was right. It seems to me I knew very little
then, and I know not much more now; but I cherish a
hate for that Jermyn to this day.
"We were a week working up as far as Yarmouth
Roads, and then we got into a gale--the famous October
gale of twenty-two years ago. It was wind, lightning,
sleet, snow, and a terrific sea. We were flying light, and
you may imagine how bad it was when I tell you we had
Youth |
