| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: weight that lay on the steps, carelessly testing them. For the
rest, he was going back here; something of the cold, loose
freshness got into his brain, he believed. In the two years of
absence his power of concentration had been stronger, his
perceptions more free from prejudice, gaining every day delicate
point, acuteness of analysis. He drew a long breath of the icy
air, coarse with the wild perfume of the prairie. No, his
temperament needed a subtiler atmosphere than this, rarer essence
than mere brutal freedom The East, the Old World, was his proper
sphere for self-development. He would go as soon as he could
command the means, leaving all clogs behind. ALL? His idle
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Look at the cloth of my apparel;
Try me and test me, lock and barrel;
And own, to give the devil his due,
I have made more of life than you.
Yet I nor sought nor risked a life;
I shudder at an open knife;
The perilous seas I still avoided
And stuck to land whate'er betided.
I had no gold, no marble quarry,
I was a poor apothecary,
Yet here I stand, at thirty-eight,
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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 Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: always insist on it!
LADY PLYMDALE. [To MR. DUMBY.] Who is that well-dressed woman
talking to Windermere?
DUMBY. Haven't got the slightest idea! Looks like an EDITION DE
LUXE of a wicked French novel, meant specially for the English
market.
MRS. ERLYNNE. So that is poor Dumby with Lady Plymdale? I hear
she is frightfully jealous of him. He doesn't seem anxious to
speak to me to-night. I suppose he is afraid of her. Those straw-
coloured women have dreadful tempers. Do you know, I think I'll
dance with you first, Windermere. [LORD WINDERMERE bits his lip
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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 Foolish Virgin by Thomas Dixon: mountains of North Carolina just to see you. And we're
goin' to sit up all night and look at ye----"
He sat down deliberately, and Nance fumbled her
hands with a nervous movement.
Mary's heart went out in sympathy to the forlorn
old creature in her embarrassment. Her dress was dirty
and ragged, an ill-fitting gingham, the elbows out and
her bare, bony arms showing through. The waist was too
short and always slipping from the belt of wrinkled
cloth beneath which she kept trying to stuff it.
Mary caught her restless eye at last and held it in
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