| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: the dust!"
"I like these people," confessed Herr Langen to me. "I like them very,
very much. I think I shall take a room here for the whole summer."
"Why?"
"Oh, because they live close to the earth, and therefore despise it."
He pushed away his bowl of sour milk and lit a cigarette. We ate, solidly
and seriously, until those seven and a half kilometres to Mindelbau
stretched before us like an eternity. Even Karl's activity became so full
fed that he lay on the ground and removed his leather waistbelt. Elsa
suddenly leaned over to Fritz and whispered, who on hearing her to the end
and asking her if she loved him, got up and made a little speech.
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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 Heritage of the Desert by Zane Grey: sent a bullet into him at long range. Stung, the grizzly whirled, bit at
his side, and then reared with a roar of fury.
But he did not see Jack. He dropped down and launched his huge bulk for
Mescal. The blood rushed back to Jack's heart, and his empty veins
seemed to freeze.
The grizzly hurdled the streams of sheep. Terror for Mescal dominated
Jack; if he had possessed wings he could not have flown quickly enough to
head the bear. Checking himself with a suddenness that fetched him to
his knees, he levelled the rifle. It waved as if it were a stick of
willow. The bead-sight described a blurred curve round the bear. Yet he
shot--in vain--again--in vain.
The Heritage of the Desert |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy: invocating, if not quite deprecatory.
He was arrested by the spectacle, not so much in its intrinsic
character--though that was striking enough to a man who called
himself the husband of the sufferer's friend and nurse--but in its
character as the counterpart of one that had its hour many months
before, in which he had figured as the patient, and the woman had
been Felice Charmond.
"Is he in great danger--can you save him?" she cried again.
Fitzpiers aroused himself, came a little nearer, and examined
Winterborne as he stood. His inspection was concluded in a mere
glance. Before he spoke he looked at her contemplatively as to
The Woodlanders |
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 New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: our own for the next two thousand years?
It was the last was most forgotten of all that faith mislaid.
Before mankind, in my vision that night, stretched new centuries of
confusion, vast stupid wars, hastily conceived laws, foolish
temporary triumphs of order, lapses, set-backs, despairs,
catastrophes, new beginnings, a multitudinous wilderness of time, a
nigh plotless drama of wrong-headed energies. In order to assuage
my parting from Isabel we had set ourselves to imagine great rewards
for our separation, great personal rewards; we had promised
ourselves success visible and shining in our lives. To console
ourselves in our separation we had made out of the BLUE WEEKLY and
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