| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: ensuing story to me and Captain Good, who was dining with him. He had
eaten his dinner and drunk two or three glasses of old port, just to
help Good and myself to the end of the second bottle. It was an unusual
thing for him to do, for he was a most abstemious man, having conceived,
as he used to say, a great horror of drink from observing its effects
upon the class of colonists--hunters, transport riders and
others--amongst whom he had passed so many years of his life.
Consequently the good wine took more effect on him than it would have
done on most men, sending a little flush into his wrinkled cheeks, and
making him talk more freely than usual.
Dear old man! I can see him now, as he went limping up and down the
Long Odds |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Horse's Tale by Mark Twain: My dear Brother-in-Law, - Please let me write again in Spanish, I
cannot trust my English, and I am aware, from what your brother
used to say, that army officers educated at the Military Academy of
the United States are taught our tongue. It is as I told you in my
other letter: both my poor sister and her husband, when they found
they could not recover, expressed the wish that you should have
their little Catherine - as knowing that you would presently be
retired from the army - rather than that she should remain with me,
who am broken in health, or go to your mother in California, whose
health is also frail.
You do not know the child, therefore I must tell you something
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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 Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: an infliction, a visitation. It came in sections during
the next three weeks, each section headed by a donkey carrying
a white man in new clothes and tan shoes, bowing from
that elevation right and left to the impressed pilgrims.
A quarrelsome band of footsore sulky niggers trod on the heels
of the donkey; a lot of tents, camp-stools, tin boxes, white cases,
brown bales would be shot down in the courtyard, and the air
of mystery would deepen a little over the muddle of the station.
Five such instalments came, with their absurd air of disorderly
flight with the loot of innumerable outfit shops and
provision stores, that, one would think, they were lugging,
Heart of Darkness |
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 A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: "I can have income enough when I please," she was wont to say; "I have
invested fifty francs on the Grand-livre."
No one could ever understand how it happened that Florine, handsome as
she was, had remained in obscurity for seven years; but the fact is,
Florine was enrolled as a supernumerary at thirteen years of age, and
made her debut two years later at an obscure boulevard theatre. At
fifteen, neither beauty nor talent exist; a woman is simply all
promise.
She was now twenty-eight,--the age at which the beauties of a French
woman are in their glory. Painters particularly admired the lustre of
her white shoulders, tinted with olive tones about the nape of the
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