| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: No place of service there, no cause of fight,
Nor gainst our foes to use your force and might.
XII
"But if you follow me, within this wall
With Christian arms hemmed in on every side,
Withouten battle, fight, or stroke at all,
Even at noonday, I will you safely guide,
Where you delight, rejoice, and glory shall
In perils great to see your prowess tried.
That noble town you may preserve and shield,
Till Egypt's host come to renew the field."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: one eye meaningly as he entered, and O'Leary handed a brass key to
him over the bar with the remark, "Stamp on the floor three
toimes, Dinny, an' I'll send yez up what ye want to drink." Then
Crimmins opened a door concealed by a wooden screen, and the three
disappeared upstairs. Crimmins reappeared within an hour, and
hurried out the front door. In a few moments he returned with
Justice Rowan, who had adjourned court. Immediately after the
justice's arrival there came three raps from the floor above, and
O'Leary swung back the door, and disappeared with an assortment of
drinkables on a tray.
The conference lasted until noon. Then the men separated outside
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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 Reminiscences of Tolstoy by Leo Tolstoy: feeling rather bored at nothing getting up; when all of a sudden,
just at the moment we least expected it, right in front of us,
twenty paces away, would jump up a gray hare as if from the
bowels of the earth.
The dogs had seen it before we had, and had started forward
already in full pursuit. We began to bawl, "Tally-ho! tally-ho!"
like madmen, flogging our horses with all our might, and flying
after them.
¹The balks are the banks dividing the fields of
different owners or crops. Hedges are not used for this purpose
in Russia.
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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 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: scarce a house, appeared upon the fields of wild hill that ran
north, east, and west, all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight
of the morning. A multitude of little birds kept sweeping and
twittering about my path; they perched on the stone pillars, they
pecked and strutted on the turf, and I saw them circle in volleys
in the blue air, and show, from time to time, translucent
flickering wings between the sun and me.
Almost from the first moment of my march, a faint large noise, like
a distant surf, had filled my ears. Sometimes I was tempted to
think it the voice of a neighbouring waterfall, and sometimes a
subjective result of the utter stillness of the hill. But as I
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