| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: quite on the face of the act, under an impulse with which they had
nothing to do. He had come - putting the thing pompously - to look
at his "property," which he had thus for a third of a century not
been within four thousand miles of; or, expressing it less
sordidly, he had yielded to the humour of seeing again his house on
the jolly corner, as he usually, and quite fondly, described it -
the one in which he had first seen the light, in which various
members of his family had lived and had died, in which the holidays
of his overschooled boyhood had been passed and the few social
flowers of his chilled adolescence gathered, and which, alienated
then for so long a period, had, through the successive deaths of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: "If you are trying to bring me to admit that London is an
odious place, you'll not succeed. I'm extremely fond of it,
and I think it the jolliest place in the world."
"Pour vous autres. I never said the contrary," Mrs. Westgate retorted.
I make use of this expression, because both interlocutors had begun
to raise their voices. Percy Beaumont naturally did not like to hear
his country abused, and Mrs. Westgate, no less naturally, did not like
a stubborn debater.
"Hallo!" said Lord Lambeth; "what are they up to now?"
And he came away from the window, where he had been standing
with Bessie Alden.
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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 Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: "His talent."
"Oh, he gives lessons?"
"No," said Cousin Betty; "he gets them, and hard ones too!"
"And his Christian name--is it a pretty name?"
"Wenceslas."
"What a wonderful imagination you old maids have!" exclaimed the
Baroness. "To hear you talk, Lisbeth, one might really believe you."
"You see, mamma, he is a Pole, and so accustomed to the knout that
Lisbeth reminds him of the joys of his native land."
They all three laughed, and Hortense sang /Wenceslas! idole de mon
ame!/ instead of /O Mathilde/.
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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 Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: But homeward--home--what home? had he a home?
His home, he walk'd. Bright was that afternoon,
Sunny but chill; till drawn thro' either chasm,
Where either haven open'd on the deeps,
Roll'd a sea-haze and whelm'd the world in gray;
Cut off the length of highway on before,
And left but narrow breadth to left and right
Of wither'd holt or tilth or pasturage.
On the nigh-naked tree the Robin piped
Disconsolate, and thro' the dripping haze
The dead weight of the dead leaf bore it down.
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