| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: we must try it!'--And every five minutes he'd break out with, 'And I think
this is a man I know, Captain; I'm not sure, but I think he comes from up
Lo Magundis way!'--as if any born devil cared whether a bloody nigger came
from Lo Magundis or anywhere else! I'm sure he said it fifteen times. And
then he broke out, 'I don't mean that I'm better than you or anybody else,
Captain; I'm as bad a man as any in camp, and I know it.' And off he
started, telling us all the sins he'd ever committed; and he kept on, 'I'm
an unlearned, ignorant man, Captain; but I must stand by this nigger; he's
got no one else!' And then he says--'If you let me take him up to Lo
Magundis, sir, I'm not afraid; and I'll tell the people there that it's not
their land and their women that we want, it's them to be our brothers and
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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 Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: the middle, knee-deep in stacks of handbills and posters, of
_Why Drink French Brandy?_ and _The Advertiser's Vade-
Mecum._ It was flanked upon the one hand by two female
type-writers, who rested not between the hours of nine and
four, and upon the other by a model of the agricultural
machine. The walls, where they were not broken by telephone
boxes and a couple of photographs--one representing the wreck
of the James L. Moody on a bold and broken coast, the other
the Saturday tug alive with amateur fishers--almost
disappeared under oil-paintings gaudily framed. Many of these
were relics of the Latin Quarter, and I must do Pinkerton the
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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 Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: body, and put into the body of a bee, or of a lion, or any other
body; or into no body at all. At least so I believe; and so, I am
happy to say, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred
and ninety-nine people out of every million have always believed,
because they have used their human instincts and their common
sense, and have obeyed (without knowing it) the warning of a great
and good philosopher called Herder, that "The organ is in no case
the power which works by it;" which is as much as to say, that the
engine is not the engine-driver, nor the spade the gardener.
There have always been, and always will be, a few people who
cannot see that. They think that a man's soul is part of his
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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 In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: say this acquiescence - has been known, at the fulfilment of his
crowning wish, on the mere sight of that desired hermitage, his
coffin - to revive, recover, shake off the hand of death, and be
restored for years to his occupations - carving tikis (idols), let
us say, or braiding old men's beards. From all this it may be
conceived how easily they meet death when it approaches naturally.
I heard one example, grim and picturesque. In the time of the
small-pox in Hapaa, an old man was seized with the disease; he had
no thought of recovery; had his grave dug by a wayside, and lived
in it for near a fortnight, eating, drinking, and smoking with the
passers-by, talking mostly of his end, and equally unconcerned for
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