| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: into my boxes when I am not looking.' In the afternoon I saw him.
He was lying on his back with closed eyes, and I withdrew quietly,
but I heard him mutter, `Live rightly, die, die . . .' I listened.
There was nothing more. Was he rehearsing some speech in his sleep,
or was it a fragment of a phrase from some newspaper article?
He had been writing for the papers and meant to do so again,
`for the furthering of my ideas. It's a duty.'
"His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer
down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun
never shines. But I had not much time to give him, because I was
helping the engine-driver to take to pieces the leaky cylinders,
Heart of Darkness |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: like the cross that Sister Helen Vincula wore. No, this cross was
shining very brightly, and it was very golden in the sunlight,--and--
somehow, somehow,--Bessie Bell knew just how that cross felt,--she
knew without feeling it. She did not have to feel it as she had
felt the dress.
Bessie Bell looked and thought. She thought this lady looked like a
Sister--and yet there was a difference. She looked also like Just-
A-Lady, and she also looked grand and important enough for a Mama.
Bessie Bell looked and thought, but she could not tell just exactly
what this lady was.
It was best that she should ask, and then she would surely know.
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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 Master of the World by Jules Verne: identity was established.
At the moment, they were waiting to follow me to police headquarters?
For it was there that I was bound, as usual. If they accompanied me I
might be able to offer them a hospitality for which they would scarce
thank me.
I took my hat; and while the housekeeper remained peeping from the
window, I went down stairs, opened the door, and stepped into the
street.
The two men were no longer there.
Despite all my watchfulness, that day I saw no more of them as I
passed along the streets. From that time on, indeed, neither my old
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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 Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: with the poem; and the women, furious because they had no poets in
their train to extol them as angels, rose, looked bored by the
reading, murmuring, "Very nice!" "Charming!" "Perfect!" with frigid
coldness.
"If you love me, do not congratulate the poet or his angel," Lolotte
laid her commands on her dear Adrien in imperious tones, and Adrien
was fain to obey.
"Empty words, after all," Zephirine remarked to Francis, "and love is
a poem that we live."
"You have just expressed the very thing that I was thinking, Zizine,
but I should not have put it so neatly," said Stanislas, scanning
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