| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: New Moon the young Emperor came forth from his palace and went into
the mosque to pray. His hair and beard were dyed with rose-leaves,
and his cheeks were powdered with a fine gold dust. The palms of
his feet and hands were yellow with saffron.
'At sunrise he went forth from his palace in a robe of silver, and
at sunset he returned to it again in a robe of gold. The people
flung themselves on the ground and hid their faces, but I would not
do so. I stood by the stall of a seller of dates and waited. When
the Emperor saw me, he raised his painted eyebrows and stopped. I
stood quite still, and made him no obeisance. The people marvelled
at my boldness, and counselled me to flee from the city. I paid no
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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 The Wrong Box by Stevenson & Osbourne: parent is extreme, and Gideon (and not his uncle, whose initials
he had humorously borrowed) was the author of Who Put Back the
Clock? He had never acknowledged it, or only to some intimate
friends while it was still in proof; after its appearance and
alarming failure, the modesty of the novelist had become more
pressing, and the secret was now likely to be better kept than
that of the authorship of Waverley.
A copy of the work (for the date of my tale is already yesterday)
still figured in dusty solitude in the bookstall at Waterloo; and
Gideon, as he passed with his ticket for Hampton Court, smiled
contemptuously at the creature of his thoughts. What an idle
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