| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: hounds out. So the first thing he did when he was over the wall
was to make the neatest double sharp to his right, and run along
under the wall for nearly half a mile.
Whereby Sir John, and the keeper, and the steward, and the
gardener, and the ploughman, and the dairymaid, and all the hue-
and-cry together, went on ahead half a mile in the very opposite
direction, and inside the wall, leaving him a mile off on the
outside; while Tom heard their shouts die away in the woods and
chuckled to himself merrily.
At last he came to a dip in the land, and went to the bottom of it,
and then he turned bravely away from the wall and up the moor; for
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: his companions of the Scotland Yard household, the Duke of
Clarence, the Bishop of Winchester, and some of the noblemen of
the Earl of Mackworth's party, who had been buzzing about the
Prince for the past month or so. But his glance swept over all
these, rather perceiving than seeing them, and then rested upon a
square box-like compartment not unlike a prisoner's dock in the
courtroom of our day, for in the box sat his father, with the
Earl of Mackworth upon one side and Sir James Lee upon the other.
The blind man's face was very pale, but still wore its usual
expression of calm serenity--the calm serenity of a blind face.
The Earl was also very pale, and he kept his eyes fixed
Men of Iron |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: I found a fair quantity of fallen soot. I at once assumed, since it
appeared to be the only means of entrance, that something has been
dropped down; and I took it for granted that the thing, whatever it was,
must still be concealed either in the study or in the library.
But when I had obtained the evidence of the groom, Wills, I perceived
that the cry from the lane or from the park was a signal.
I noted that the movements of anyone seated at the study table
were visible, in shadow, on the blind, and that the study occupied
the corner of a two-storied wing and, therefore, had a short chimney.
What did the signal mean? That Sir Crichton had leaped up from
his chair, and either had received the Zayat Kiss or had seen the thing
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
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 Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: of Cupid in the parlor of his country-house, - bow, arrows, wings,
and all complete. A visitor, indigenous to the region, looking
pensively at the figure, asked the lady of the house "if that was a
statoo of her deceased infant?" What a delicious, though somewhat
voluminous biography, social, educational, and aesthetic in that
brief question!
[Please observe with what Machiavellian astuteness I smuggled in
the particular offence which it was my object to hold up to my
fellow-boarders, without too personal an attack on the individual
at whose door it lay.]
That was an exceedingly dull person who made the remark, EX PEDE
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
