| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: prodigious parts and wit, to speak things that surprise and
astonish. Strange, so many hopeful princes, and so many shameful
kings! If they happen to die young, they would have been prodigies
of wisdom and virtue. If they live, they are often prodigies
indeed, but of another sort.
Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but
corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or a good
ministry; for which reason Courts are so overrun with politics.
A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.
Apollo was held the god of physic and sender of diseases. Both
wore originally the same trade, and still continue.
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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 Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart: The man in ten didn't move, although my heart was thumping until I
thought he would hear it.
"I felt around cautiously. It was perfectly dark, and I came across
a bit of chain, about as long as my finger. It seemed a queer thing
to find there, and it was sticky, too."
He shuddered, and I could see Alison's hands clenching and
unclenching with the strain.
"All at once it struck me that the man was strangely silent, and I
think I lost my nerve. Anyhow, I drew the curtains open a little,
and let the light fall on my hands. They were red, blood-red."
He leaned one hand on the back of the chair, and was silent for a
The Man in Lower Ten |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: misty and ungenial.
"The custom of a soldier," said the young nobleman to his
friends. "Many of them acquire habitual vigilance, and cannot
sleep after the early hour at which their duty usually commands
them to be alert."
Yet the explanation which Lord Woodville thus offered to the
company seemed hardly satisfactory to his own mind, and it was in
a fit of silence and abstraction that he waited the return of the
General. It took place near an hour after the breakfast bell had
rung. He looked fatigued and feverish. His hair, the powdering
and arrangement of which was at this time one of the most
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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 Glasses by Henry James: could treat him as a trophy her affairs were rather at the ebb.
True there always hung from her belt a promiscuous fringe of
scalps. Much at any rate would have come and gone since our
separation in July. She had spent four months abroad, where, on
Swiss and Italian lakes, in German cities, in the French capital,
many accidents might have happened.
CHAPTER V
I had been again with my mother, but except Mrs. Meldrum and the
gleam of France had not found at Folkestone my old resources and
pastimes. Mrs. Meldrum, much edified by my report of the
performances, as she called them, in my studio, had told me that to
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