| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: with the air of people bound for a dull "At Home," and after them
Hilda and Muriel straggled, yawning and pinning each other's
veils and ribbons as they came. They had promised Lily to go to
church with her, they declared, and Lily was such a dear old duck
that they didn't mind doing it to please her, though they
couldn't fancy what had put the idea in her head, and though for
their own part they would much rather have played lawn tennis
with Jack and Gwen, if she hadn't told them she was coming. The
Misses Trenor were followed by Lady Cressida Raith, a
weather-beaten person in Liberty silk and ethnological trinkets,
who, on seeing the omnibus, expressed her surprise that they were
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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 White Moll by Frank L. Packard: that it had come to him through old Jake Luertz's runner, a very
innocent-faced young man who is known to the trade as the Crab."
Danglar paused - and laughed again. Unconsciously Rhoda Gray drew
her shawl a little closer about her shoulders. It seemed to bring
a chill into the room, that laugh. Once before, on another night,
Danglar had laughed, and, with his parted lips, she had likened him
to a beast showing its fangs. He looked it now more than ever. For
all his ease of voice and manner, he was in deadly earnest; and if
there was merriment in his laugh, it but seemed to enhance the
menace and the promise of unholy purpose that lurked in the cold
glitter of his small, black eyes.
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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 The Soul of Man by Oscar Wilde: artist at all.
And it is to be noted that it is the fact that Art is this intense
form of Individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it
in an authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as
corrupting as it is contemptible. It is not quite their fault.
The public has always, and in every age, been badly brought up.
They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want
of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they
have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of
seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much,
and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own
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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 Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: nigh complete as it can be, where some are rich and others poor; and
the only privileged class, it sometimes seems to me, is the pauper,
who has neither the responsibility of self-government, nor the toil
of self-support.
A minority of malcontents, some justly, some unjustly, angry with
the present state of things, will always exist in this world. But a
majority of malcontents we shall never have, as long as the workmen
are allowed to keep untouched and unthreatened their rights of free
speech, free public meeting, free combination for all purposes which
do not provoke a breach of the peace. There may be (and probably
are) to be found in London and the large towns, some of those
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