| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Death of the Lion by Henry James: Sevres as tell her I must go before my date.' It sounds dreadfully
weak, but he has some reason, and he pays for his imagination,
which puts him (I should hate it) in the place of others and makes
him feel, even against himself, their feelings, their appetites,
their motives. It's indeed inveterately against himself that he
makes his imagination act. What a pity he has such a lot of it!
He's too beastly intelligent. Besides, the famous reading's still
to come off, and it has been postponed a day to allow Guy
Walsingham to arrive. It appears this eminent lady's staying at a
house a few miles off, which means of course that Mrs. Wimbush has
forcibly annexed her. She's to come over in a day or two - Mrs.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: nerves in Manila cheroots, and a particularly big and heavy type
of Egyptian cigarette with a considerable amount of opium, and
his disorganized system seized upon this sudden change as a
grievance, and set all his jangling being crying aloud for one
cigarette--just one cigarette.
The cheroots, it seemed, he could better spare, but a cigarette
became his symbol for his lost steadiness and ease.
It brought him low.
The reader has already been told the lamentable incident of the
stolen cigarette and the small boy, and how the bishop, tormented
by that shameful memory, cried aloud in the night.
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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 Disputation of the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences by Dr. Martin Luther: after, but before absolution, as tests of true contrition.
13. The dying are freed by death from all penalties; they are
already dead to canonical rules, and have a right to be
released from them.
14. The imperfect health [of soul], that is to say, the
imperfect love, of the dying brings with it, of necessity,
great fear; and the smaller the love, the greater is the fear.
15. This fear and horror is sufficient of itself alone (to say
nothing of other things) to constitute the penalty of
purgatory, since it is very near to the horror of despair.
16. Hell, purgatory, and heaven seem to differ as do despair,
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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 Octopus by Frank Norris: unwilling to go as yet, stunned, distressed, stood clumsily
about, their eyes vague, their hands swinging at their sides,
looking stupidly into each others' faces. A sense of impending
calamity, oppressive, foreboding, gloomy, passed through the air
overhead in the night, a long shiver of anguish and of terror,
mysterious, despairing.
In the harness room, however, the excitement continued unchecked.
One rancher after another delivered himself of a torrent of
furious words. There was no order, merely the frenzied outcry of
blind fury. One spirit alone was common to all--resistance at
whatever cost and to whatever lengths.
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