| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: discoveries, now of sinister crimes, abject squalor and poverty,
imperial splendour and luxury, Buckingham Palace, Rotten Row,
Mayfair, the slums of Pimlico, garbage-littered streets of bawling
costermongers, the inky silver of the barge-laden Thames--such was
the background of our days. We went across St. Margaret's Close and
through the school gate into a quiet puerile world apart from all
these things. We joined in the earnest acquirement of all that was
necessary for Greek epigrams and Latin verse, and for the rest
played games. We dipped down into something clear and elegantly
proportioned and time-worn and for all its high resolve of stalwart
virility a little feeble, like our blackened and decayed portals by
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Where There's A Will by Mary Roberts Rinehart: done it only the day before.
"I guess you're safe enough here," I said. "It's always slack in
January--only a few chronics and the Saturday-to-Monday husbands,
except a drummer now and then who drives up from Finleyville.
It's too early for drooping society buds, and the chronic livers
don't get around until late March, after the banquet season
closes. It will be pretty quiet for a while."
And at that minute the door was flung open, and Bath-house Mike
staggered in.
"The old doctor!" he gasped. "He's dead, Miss Minnie--died just
now in the hot room in the bathhouse! One minute he was givin'
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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 Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: "Good heavens, how I love you! Alas! I have intrusted too much to
my love and my hopes. An accident which should sink that
overloaded bark would end my life. For three years now I have not
seen you, and at the thought of going to Belgirate my heart beats
so wildly that I am forced to stop.--To see you, to hear that
girlish caressing voice! To embrace in my gaze that ivory skin,
glistening under the candlelight, and through which I can read
your noble mind! To admire your fingers playing on the keys, to
drink in your whole soul in a look, in the tone of an /Oime/ or an
/Alberto/! To walk by the blossoming orange-trees, to live a few
months in the bosom of that glorious scenery!--That is life. What
Albert Savarus |
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 Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals by Charles Darwin: [6] Muller (`Elements of Physiology,' Eng. translat. vol. ii. p. 932) in
speaking of the nerves, says, "any sudden change of condition of whatever kind
sets the nervous principle into action." See Virchow and Bernard on the same
subject in passages in the two works referred to in my last foot-note.
[7] H. Spencer, `Essays, Scientific, Political,' &c., Second Series,
1863, pp. 109, 111.
[8] Sir H. Holland, in speaking (`Medical Notes and Reflexions,'
1839, p. 328) of that curious state of body called the _fidgets_,
remarks that it seems due to "an accumulation of some cause
of irritation which requires muscular action for its relief."
Another principle, namely, the internal consciousness
Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals |
