| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Vicar of Tours by Honore de Balzac: persecution instituted against him for the last three months by
Mademoiselle Gamard, whose evil intentions would doubtless have been
fathomed much sooner by a more intelligent man. Old maids have a
special talent for accentuating the words and actions which their
dislikes suggest to them. They scratch like cats. They not only wound
but they take pleasure in wounding, and in making their victim see
that he is wounded. A man of the world would never have allowed
himself to be scratched twice; the good abbe, on the contrary, had
taken several blows from those sharp claws before he could be brought
to believe in any evil intention.
But when he did perceive it, he set to work, with the inquisitorial
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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 Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: soul made incarnate music, these heavy perfumes are my emotions
dissolved into aerial essence, this flaming blue and gold sky is
the 'very me,' that part of me that incessantly and in- solently,
yes, and a little deliberately, triumphs over that other part--a
thing of nerves and tissues that suffers and cries out, and that
must die to-morrow perhaps, or twenty years hence."
Then there was her humour, which was part of her strange wisdom,
and was always awake and on the watch. In all her letters,
written in exquisite English prose, but with an ardent imagery
and a vehement sincerity of emotion which make them, like the
poems, indeed almost more directly, un-English, Oriental, there
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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 The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad: "You see I wasn't."
"No, sir. I could have sworn I had heard you moving in there not
a moment ago. It's most extraordinary . . . very sorry, sir."
I passed on with an inward shudder. I was so identified
with my secret double that I did not even mention
the fact in those scanty, fearful whispers we exchanged.
I suppose he had made some slight noise of some kind or other.
It would have been miraculous if he hadn't at one time or another.
And yet, haggard as he appeared, he looked always perfectly
self-controlled, more than calm--almost invulnerable.
On my suggestion he remained almost entirely in
The Secret Sharer |
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 Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: Norman likewise, many of primaeval and heathen antiquity, many of
high nobility, all worked together, as at home, to form the Free
Commoners of England.
If any should wish to know more on this curious and important
subject, let me recommend them to study Ferguson's "Teutonic Name
System," a book from which you will discover that some of our
quaintest, and seemingly most plebeian surnames--many surnames, too,
which are extinct in England, but remain in America--are really
corruptions of good old Teutonic names, which our ancestors may have
carried in the German Forest, before an Englishman set foot on
British soil; from which he will rise with the comfortable feeling
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