| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: in the world, but merely from his evacuations;--but this often gives a very
incorrect outline,--unless, indeed, you take a sketch of his repletions
too; and by correcting one drawing from the other, compound one good figure
out of them both.
I should have no objection to this method, but that I think it must smell
too strong of the lamp,--and be render'd still more operose, by forcing you
to have an eye to the rest of his Non-naturals.--Why the most natural
actions of a man's life should be called his Non-naturals,--is another
question.
There are others, fourthly, who disdain every one of these expedients;--not
from any fertility of their own, but from the various ways of doing it,
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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 Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: going to be murdered with my eyes shut."
"If you're going to be murdered," I retorted, "it won't make any
difference whether they are shut or open. But you may stay in
the dressing-room, if you will lie on the couch: when you sleep
in a chair you snore."
She was too far gone to be indignant, but after a while she came
to the door and looked in to where I was composing myself for
sleep with Drummond's Spiritual Life.
"That wasn't a woman, Miss Rachel," she said, with her shoes in
her hand. "It was a man in a long coat."
"What woman was a man?" I discouraged her without looking up,
The Circular Staircase |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Salome by Oscar Wilde: SECOND SOLDAT. Un autre qui vient de la ville de Chypre, qui est
jaune comme de l'or.
LE CAPPADOCIEN. J'aime beaucoup l'or.
SECOND SOLDAT. Et le troisieme qui est un vin sicilien. Ce vin-le
est rouge comme le sang.
LE NUBIEN. Les dieux de mon pays aiment beaucoup le sang. Deux
fois par an nous leur sacrifions des jeunes hommes et des vierges:
cinquante jeunes hommes et cent vierges. Mais il semble que nous ne
leur donnons jamais assez, car ils sont tres durs envers nous.
LE CAPPADOCIEN. Dans mon pays il n'y a pas de dieux e present, les
Romains les ont chasses. Il y en a qui disent qu'ils se sont
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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 Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: with muffled hands, and to see them through a veil. His life
becomes a palsied fumbling after notes that are silent when he
has found and struck them. He cannot recognise that this
phlegmatic and unimpressionable body with which he now goes
burthened, is the same that he knew heretofore so quick and
delicate and alive.
He is tempted to lay the blame on the very softness and
amenity of the climate, and to fancy that in the rigours of
the winter at home, these dead emotions would revive and
flourish. A longing for the brightness and silence of fallen
snow seizes him at such times. He is homesick for the hale
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