| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: tracking, began asking people if they had seen a Young Lady in
Grey on a bicycle. Six casual people hadn't, and he began to feel
the inquiry was conspicuous, and desisted. But what was to be
done?
Hoopdriver was hot, tired, and hungry, and full of the first
gnawings of a monstrous remorse. He decided to get himself some
tea and meat, and in the Royal George he meditated over the
business in a melancholy frame enough. They had passed out of his
world--vanished, and all his wonderful dreams of some vague,
crucial interference collapsed like a castle of cards. What a
fool he had been not to stick to them like a leech! He might 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 Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: the punning name given to him. But in Polybius there is, I think,
little of that bitterness and pettiness of spirit which
characterises most other writers, and an incidental story he tells
of his relations with one of the historians whom he criticised
shows that he was a man of great courtesy and refinement of taste -
as, indeed, befitted one who had lived always in the society of
those who were of great and noble birth.
Now, as regards the character of the canons by which he criticises
the works of other authors, in the majority of cases he employs
simply his own geographical and military knowledge, showing, for
instance, the impossibility in the accounts given of Nabis's march
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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 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: She threw changing glances at men who passed her, giving smiling
invitations to men of rural or untaught pattern and usually seeming
sedately unconscious of the men with a metropolitan seal upon their faces.
Crossing glittering avenues, she went into the throng emerging
from the places of forgetfulness. She hurried forward through the
crowd as if intent upon reaching a distant home, bending forward in
her handsome cloak, daintily lifting her skirts and picking for her
well-shod feet the dryer spots upon the pavements.
The restless doors of saloons, clashing to and fro, disclosed
animated rows of men before bars and hurrying barkeepers.
A concert hall gave to the street faint sounds of swift,
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
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 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: And in those days the storm had for me a perfect impersonation, as
durable and unvarying as any heathen deity. I always heard it, as
a horseman riding past with his cloak about his head, and somehow
always carried away, and riding past again, and being baffled yet
once more, AD INFINITUM, all night long. I think I wanted him to
get past, but I am not sure; I know only that I had some interest
either for or against in the matter; and I used to lie and hold my
breath, not quite frightened, but in a state of miserable
exaltation.
My first John Knox is in proof, and my second is on the anvil. It
is very good of me so to do; for I want so much to get to my real
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