| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: "Seal the letter, and direct it. To Lord Brandon, Brandon Square, Hyde
Park, London, Angleterre.--That is right. When I am dead, post the
letter in Tours, and prepay the postage.--Now," she added, after a
pause, "take the little pocketbook that you know, and come here, my
dear child. . . . There are twelve thousand francs in it," she said,
when Louis had returned to her side. "That is all your own. Oh me! you
would have been better off if your father----"
"My father," cried the boy, "where is he?"
"He is dead," she said, laying her finger on her lips; "he died to
save my honor and my life."
She looked upwards. If any tears had been left to her, she would have
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: as of invisible wolves. It is named Ghost Mountain, and well named.
Would that the king had found other business for us than the slaying
of these sorcerers--for they are sorcerers indeed, and this is the
home of their sorceries. Tell me, brother, what was that which leaped
between us this morning in the dark! I say it was a wizard. Wow! they
are all wizards. Could any who was but a man have done the deeds which
he who is named the Wolf wrought down by the river yonder, and then
have escaped? Had the Axe but stayed with the Club they would have
eaten up our impi."
"The Axe had a woman to watch," laughed the other. "Yes, it is true
this is a place of wizards and evil things. Methinks I see the red
Nada the Lily |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: that all women are false, should be amazed to find our own particular
drab no better than the rest?
THE BEEFEATER. Not all, sir. Decent bodies, many of them.
THE MAN. _[intolerantly]_ No. All false. All. If thou deny it,
thou liest.
THE BEEFEATER. You judge too much by the Court, sir. There, indeed,
you may say of frailty that its name is woman.
THE MAN. _[pulling out his tablets again]_ Prithee say that again:
that about frailty: the strain of music.
THE BEEFEATER. What strain of music, sir? I'm no musician, God
knows.
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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 Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: it a form of self-hallucination, all the more harmful because
people thereby acquire a sort of moral right to continue that idle,
aristocratic life and get to go on increasing the poverty of the
people.
In the autumn of 1890 my father thought of writing an article
on the famine, which had then spread over nearly all Russia.
Although from the newspapers and from the accounts brought by
those who came from the famine-stricken parts he already knew about
the extent of the peasantry's disaster, nevertheless, when his old
friend Ivánovitch Rayóvsky called on him at
Yásnaya Polyána and proposed that he should drive
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