| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Lesson of the Master by Henry James: work had not still rung in his ears he should have liked her - so
far as it could be a question of that in connexion with a woman to
whom he had not yet spoken and to whom probably he should never
speak if it were left to her. Pretty women were a clear need to
this genius, and for the hour it was Miss Fancourt who supplied the
want. If Overt had promised himself a closer view the occasion was
now of the best, and it brought consequences felt by the young man
as important. He saw more in St. George's face, which he liked the
better for its not having told its whole story in the first three
minutes. That story came out as one read, in short instalments -
it was excusable that one's analogies should be somewhat
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: that she had stayed in England.'
'Mrs. Mickie!' cried Madeline to a passing rickshaw, 'what are you
rushing on like that for? Just go quietly and peaceably along with
us, please, and tell us what Mrs. Vesey decided to do about her part
in 'The Outcast Pearl'. I'm dining out tonight--I must know.' And
Mrs. Mickie was kind enough to accompany them all the rest of the
way.
Miss Anderson dined out, and preferred to suppose that she had no
time to think until she was on her way home along the empty road
round Jakko at eleven o'clock that night. Then it pleased her to
get out of her rickshaw and walk. There was an opulent moon, the
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: syllables. Benbow has a bulldog quality that suits the man's
character, and it takes us back to those English archers who
were his true comrades for plainness, tenacity, and pluck.
Raleigh is spirited and martial, and signifies an act of bold
conduct in the field. It is impossible to judge of Blake or
Nelson, no names current among men being worthy of such
heroes. But still it is odd enough, and very appropriate in
this connection, that the latter was greatly taken with his
Sicilian title. "The signification, perhaps, pleased him,"
says Southey; "Duke of Thunder was what in Dahomey would have
been called a STRONG NAME; it was to a sailor's taste, and
|
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 Sons of the Soil by Honore de Balzac: whose happiness halted, as it were, on one leg. The chief cause of
secret evil deeds and hidden meanness is, perhaps, an incompleted
happiness. Man can better bear a state of hopeless misery than those
terrible alternations of love and sunshine with continual rain. If the
body contracts disease, the mind contracts the leprosy of envy. In
petty minds that leprosy becomes a base and brutal cupidity, both
insolent and shrinking; in cultivated minds it fosters anti-social
doctrines, which serve a man as footholds by which to rise above his
superiors. May we not dignify with the title of proverb the pregnant
saying, "Tell me what thou hast, and I will tell thee of what thou art
thinking"?
|
