| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Coxon Fund by Henry James: there was a queer light in his eye. "My dear fellow, if I 'blamed'
the young lady I'm engaged to I shouldn't immediately say it even
to so old a friend as you." I saw that some deep discomfort, some
restless desire to be sided with, reassuringly, approvingly
mirrored, had been at the bottom of his drifting so far, and I was
genuinely touched by his confidence. It was inconsistent with his
habits; but being troubled about a woman was not, for him, a habit:
that itself was an inconsistency. George Gravener could stand
straight enough before any other combination of forces. It amused
me to think that the combination he had succumbed to had an
American accent, a transcendental aunt and an insolvent father; but
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from My Aunt Margaret's Mirror by Walter Scott: now recall her memory, child as I was when the catastrophe
occurred, without a painful reawakening of perhaps the first
images of horror that the scenes of real life stamped on my mind.
This good spinster had in her composition a strong vein of the
superstitious, and was pleased, among other fancies, to read
alone in her chamber by a taper fixed in a candlestick which she
had had formed out of a human skull. One night this strange
piece of furniture acquired suddenly the power of locomotion,
and, after performing some odd circles on her chimney-piece,
fairly leaped on the floor, and continued to roll about the
apartment. Mrs. Swinton calmly proceeded to the adjoining room
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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 Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: of Lord George's horse.
What Myles saw was a plain, rather stout man, with a face fat,
smooth, and waxy, with pale-blue eyes, and baggy in the lids;
clean shaven, except for a mustache and tuft covering lips and
chin. Somehow he felt a deep disappointment. He had expected to
see something lion-like, something regal, and, after all, the
great King Henry was commonplace, fat, unwholesome-looking. It
came to him with a sort of a shock that, after all, a King was in
nowise different from other men.
Meanwhile the Earl and his brother replaced their bascinets, and
presently the whole party moved forward upon the way to
Men of Iron |
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 New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: We have lived, my love, O, we have lived, my love!
Now along the silent river, azure
Through the sky's inverted image,
Softly swam the boat that bore our love,
Swiftly ran the shallow of our love
Through the heaven's inverted image,
In the reedy mazes round the river.
See along the silent river,
See of old the lover's shallop steer.
Berried brake and reedy island,
Heaven below and only heaven above.
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