| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: wholly indifferent to its absence. The odd thing was that she was
not appealing: she was abjectly, divinely conceited, absurdly
fantastically pleased. Her beauty was as yet all the world to her,
a world she had plenty to do to live in. Mrs. Meldrum told me more
about her, and there was nothing that, as the centre of a group of
giggling, nudging spectators, Flora wasn't ready to tell about
herself. She held her little court in the crowd, upon the grass,
playing her light over Jews and Gentiles, completely at ease in all
promiscuities. It was an effect of these things that from the very
first, with every one listening, I could mention that my main
business with her would be just to have a go at her head and to
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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 Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: My hand clutching the curtain, I stood watching him. The lids
veiled the malignant green eyes, but the thin lips seemed to smile.
Then Smith silently pointed to the hand which held a little pipe.
A sickly perfume assailed my nostrils, and the explanation
of the hushed silence, and the ease with which we had thus far
executed our plan, came to me. The cunning mind was torpid--
lost in a brutish world of dreams.
Fu-Manchu was in an opium sleep!
The dim light traced out a network of tiny lines, which covered
the yellow face from the pointed chin to the top of the great domed brow,
and formed deep shadow pools in the hollows beneath his eyes.
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Emma McChesney & Co. by Edna Ferber: humanity's orchestra will sound in your ear the sublime melody of
that great symphony called Life.
In her sunny little private office on the twelfth floor of the
great loft-building that housed the T. A. Buck Company, Emma
McChesney Buck sat listening to the street-sounds that were
wafted to her, mellowed by height and distance. The noises,
taken separately, were the nerve-racking sounds common to a busy
down-town New York cross-street. By the time they reached the
little office on the twelfth floor, they were softened, mellowed,
debrutalized, welded into a weird choirlike chant first high,
then low, rising, swelling, dying away, rising again to a dull
Emma McChesney & Co. |
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 Poems by T. S. Eliot: Produced enervate Origen.
A painter of the Umbrian school
Designed upon a gesso ground
The nimbus of the Baptized God.
The wilderness is cracked and browned
But through the water pale and thin
Still shine the unoffending feet
And there above the painter set
The Father and the Paraclete.
. . . . .
The sable presbyters approach
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