| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: "It's a habit."
"I know. But I don't think it a good one. You don't mind my
telling you?"
"Not a bit. I'm grateful."
"I'm blessed or afflicted with a trick of observation," said
Jessie, looking at the breakfast table. Mr. Hoopdriver put his
hand to his moustache and then, thinking this might be another
habit, checked his arm and stuck his hand into his pocket. He
felt juiced awkward, to use his private formula. Jessie's eye
wandered to the armchair, where a piece of binding was loose,
and, possibly to carry out her theory of an observant
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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: last few weeks."
Austin glanced around the room from cupboard to
cupboard, from shelf to shelf, in search of some new oddity.
His eyes fell at last on an odd chest, pleasantly and quaintly
carved, which stood in a dark corner of the room.
"Ah," he said, "I was forgetting, I have got something
to show you." Austin unlocked the chest, drew out a thick quarto
volume, laid it on the table, and resumed the cigar he had put
down.
"Did you know Arthur Meyrick the painter, Villiers?"
"A little; I met him two or three times at the house of
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 Arizona Nights by Stewart Edward White: "Your wife's run away with Brent Palmer."
For fully ten seconds not the faintest indication proved that the
husband had heard, except that he lifted his bridle-hand, and the
well-trained pony stopped.
"What did you say?" he asked finally.
"Your wife's run away with Brent Palmer," repeated Jed, almost
with impatience.
Again the long pause.
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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 Touchstone by Edith Wharton: any kind of personal saliency. Cleverness was useful in business;
but in society it seemed to him as futile as the sham cascades
formed by a stream that might have been used to drive a mill. He
liked the collective point of view that goes with the civilized
uniformity of dress-clothes, and his wife's attitude implied the
same preference; yet they found themselves slipping more and more
into Flamel's intimacy. Alexa had once or twice said that she
enjoyed meeting clever people; but her enjoyment took the negative
form of a smiling receptivity; and Glennard felt a growing
preference for the kind of people who have their thinking done for
them by the community.
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