| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: "Ja--who?" said the Baron.
"Bixiou told me you shammed Englishman better than he could, and I
would not believe him," said Rastignac.
"Some bankrupt caught in disguise," said du Tillet loudly. "I
suspected as much!"
"A strange place is Paris!" said Madame du Val-Noble. "After being
bankrupt in his own part of town, a merchant turns up as a nabob or a
dandy in the Champs-Elysees with impunity!--Oh! I am unlucky!
bankrupts are my bane."
"Every flower has its peculiar blight!" said Esther quietly. "Mine is
like Cleopatra's--an asp."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: -- Charles Herbert?"
Austin turned round sharply and stared at Villiers with
some astonishment.
"Charles Herbert? Weren't you in town three years ago?
No; then you have not heard of the Paul Street case? It caused
a good deal of sensation at the time."
"What was the case?"
"Well, a gentleman, a man of very good position, was
found dead, stark dead, in the area of a certain house in Paul
Street, off Tottenham Court Road. Of course the police did not
make the discovery; if you happen to be sitting up all night and
The Great God Pan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: We will rest, O my heart, till the shadows are gray in the west.
But soon we must rise, O my heart, we must wander again
Into the war of the world and the strife of the throng;
Let us rise, O my heart, let us gather the dreams that remain,
We will conquer the sorrow of life with the sorrow of song.
PAST AND FUTURE
THE NEW HATH COME AND NOW THE OLD RETIRES:
And so the past becomes a mountain-cell,
Where lone, apart, old hermit-memories dwell
In consecrated calm, forgotten yet
Of the keen heart that hastens to forget
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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 Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: pits, filled up with gravel. And see, too, how over some of the
gravel you get sand again, and then gravel again, and then sand
again, till you cannot tell where one fairly begins and the other
ends. Why, here are little dots of gravel, six or eight feet
down, in what looks the solid sand rock, yet the sand must have
been opened somehow to put the gravel in.
You say you have seen that before. You have seen the same curious
twisting of the gravel and sand into each other on the top of
Farley Hill, and in the new cutting on Minley Hill; and, best of
all, in the railway cutting between Ascot and Sunningdale, where
upon the top the white sand and gravel is arranged in red and
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