| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: Suppose you never were to see their faces;--suppose you could be put
behind a screen in the statesman's cabinet, or the prince's chamber,
would you not be glad to listen to their words, though you were
forbidden to advance beyond the screen? And when the screen is only
a little less, folded in two instead of four, and you can be hidden
behind the cover of the two boards that bind a book, and listen all
day long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied, determined,
chosen addresses of the wisest of men;--this station of audience,
and honourable privy council, you despise!
But perhaps you will say that it is because the living people talk
of things that are passing, and are of immediate interest to you,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber: extraordinarily alert woman, mentally and physically,
with a shrewd sense of values. Molly Brandeis never could
set a table without forgetting the spoons, or the salt, or
something, but she could add a double column of figures in
her head as fast as her eye could travel.
There she goes, running off with the story, as we were
afraid she would. Not only that, she is using up whole
pages of description when she should be giving us dialogue.
Prospective readers, running their eyes over a printed page,
object to the solid block formation of the descriptive
passage. And yet it is fascinating to weave words about
Fanny Herself |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: his eloquence, was wont to hold conferences, in the course of which he
demonstrated the truths of the Catholic faith for the youth of a
generation proclaimed to be indifferent in matters of belief by
another voice no less eloquent than his own. The conference had been
put off to a later hour on account of Melmoth's funeral, so Castanier
arrived just as the great preacher was epitomizing the proofs of a
future existence of happiness with all the charm of eloquence and
force of expression which have made him famous. The seeds of divine
doctrine fell into a soil prepared for them in the old dragoon, into
whom the Devil had glided. Indeed, if there is a phenomenon well
attested by experience, is it not the spiritual phenomenon commonly
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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 Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: feel itself alive; that nothing which has ever interested men or
women can cease to be a fit subject for culture.
I might remind you of what all Europe owes to the sorrow of a
single Florentine in exile at Verona, or to the love of Petrarch by
that little well in Southern France; nay, more, how even in this
dull, materialistic age the simple expression of an old man's
simple life, passed away from the clamour of great cities amid the
lakes and misty hills of Cumberland, has opened out for England
treasures of new joy compared with which the treasures of her
luxury are as barren as the sea which she has made her highway, and
as bitter as the fire which she would make her slave.
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