| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mother by Owen Wister: on Park Avenue!'"
"I put a cheerful and even insular face on the matter, for I could not
bear to see Ethel so depressed. But it was hard work for me. Some few of
my investments were evidently good; but it always seemed as if it was
into these that I had happened to put not much money, while the bulk of
my fortune was entangled in the others. Besides the usual Midsummer
faintness that overtakes the stock market, my own specialties were a good
deal more than faint. On the 20th of August I took the afternoon train to
spend my two weeks' holiday at Lenox; and during much of the journey I
gazed at the Wall Street edition of the afternoon paper that I had
purchased as I came through the Grand Central Station. Ethel and I read
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens: pauperism on an extensive scale, and ruin in a capacious aspect.
Consequently, he had never failed to receive the intelligence with
a rueful shake of the head, or a dreary stare, and had been always
observed to appear much more melancholy after a visit of condolence
than at any other time in the whole four-and-twenty hours.
It chanced, however, that sitting over the fire on this particular
occasion--perhaps because he was, as it were, done to a turn;
perhaps because he was in an unusually bright state of mind;
perhaps because he had considered the subject so long; perhaps
because of all these favouring circumstances, taken together--it
chanced that, sitting over the fire on this particular occasion, Mr
Barnaby Rudge |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: for revenge and bread.
There are races, alas! which seem, for the present at least,
mastered by circumstances. Some, like the Chinese, have sunk back
into that state; some, like the negro in Africa, seem not yet to
have emerged from it; but in Europe, during the eighteenth century,
were working not merely new forces and vitalities (abstractions
which mislead rather than explain), but living persons in plenty,
men and women, with independent and original hearts and brains,
instinct, in spite of all circumstances, with power which we shall
most wisely ascribe directly to Him who is the Lord and Giver of
Life.
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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 New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: That, in his phraseology, was "maintaining the traditions of the
school."
He had indeed an effect not of a man directing a school, but of a
man captured and directed by a school. Dead and gone Elizabethans
had begotten a monster that could carry him about in its mouth.
Yet being a man, as I say, with his hair a little stirred by a
Zeitgeist that made for change, Gates did at times display a
disposition towards developments. City Merchants had no modern
side, and utilitarian spirits were carping in the PALL MALL GAZETTE
and elsewhere at the omissions from our curriculum, and particularly
at our want of German. Moreover, four classes still worked
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