| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: in too frail a body, it was rarely that her desire was fully
granted. But in Italy she found what she could not find in
England, and from Italy her letters are radiant. "This Italy is
made of gold," she writes from Florence, "the gold of dawn and
daylight, the gold of the stars, and, now dancing in weird
enchanting rhythms through this magic month of May, the gold of
fireflies in the perfumed darkness--'aerial gold.' I long to
catch the subtle music of their fairy dances and make a poem with
a rhythm like the quick irregular wild flash of their sudden
movements. Would it not be wonderful? One black night I stood
in a garden with fireflies in my hair like darting restless stars
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: have haunted the imagination of my boyhood, and to-day he would
scarce delay me for a paragraph. An incident, at once romantic and
dramatic, which at once awakes the judgment and makes a picture for
the eye, how little do we realise its perdurable power! Perhaps no
one does so but the author, just as none but he appreciates the
influence of jingling words; so that he looks on upon life, with
something of a covert smile, seeing people led by what they fancy
to be thoughts and what are really the accustomed artifices of his
own trade, or roused by what they take to be principles and are
really picturesque effects. In a pleasant book about a school-
class club, Colonel Fergusson has recently told a little anecdote.
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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 Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain: see that they are any happier there than they were before, only
quieter. When night comes I shall throw them out-doors. I will
not sleep with them again, for I find them clammy and unpleasant
to lie among when a person hasn't anything on.
Sunday
Pulled through.
Tuesday
She has taken up with a snake now. The other animals are glad,
for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them;
and I am glad, because the snake talks, and this enables me to
get a rest.
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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 Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: Shapes, that out of the twilight
Leap, and with gesture appealing
Seem to deliver a message,
And are gone 'twixt a breath and a breath;--
Shapes that race in with the waves
Moving silverly under the moon,
And are gone ere they break into foam on the rocks
And recede;--
Breathings of love from invisible
Flutes,
Blown somewhere out in the tender
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