| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: and we had, all three, with repetition, got into such splendid
training that we went, each time, almost automatically, to mark
the close of the incident, through the very same movements.
It was striking of the children, at all events, to kiss me inveterately
with a kind of wild irrelevance and never to fail--one or the other--
of the precious question that had helped us through many a peril.
"When do you think he WILL come? Don't you think we OUGHT
to write?"--there was nothing like that inquiry, we found
by experience, for carrying off an awkwardness. "He" of course
was their uncle in Harley Street; and we lived in much profusion
of theory that he might at any moment arrive to mingle in our circle.
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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 Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: is built. The lightness of these forms, devised to meet the winds
and the seas, makes, by contrast with the great piles of bricks,
the chains and cables of their moorings appear very necessary, as
if nothing less could prevent them from soaring upwards and over
the roofs. The least puff of wind stealing round the corners of
the dock buildings stirs these captives fettered to rigid shores.
It is as if the soul of a ship were impatient of confinement.
Those masted hulls, relieved of their cargo, become restless at the
slightest hint of the wind's freedom. However tightly moored, they
range a little at their berths, swaying imperceptibly the spire-
like assemblages of cordage and spars. You can detect their
The Mirror of the Sea |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: little nearer and declared the purpose of my visit.
He would have to come at once with me, sleep on
board my ship, and to-morrow, with the first of the
ebb, he would give me his assistance in getting my
ship down to the sea, without steam. A six-hun-
dred-ton barque, drawing nine feet aft. I pro-
posed to give him eighteen dollars for his local
knowledge; and all the time I was speaking he
kept on considering attentively the various aspects
of the banana, holding first one side up to his eye,
then the other.
Falk |
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 Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: house to house keep out the sun. Mules rattle through the crowd;
curs yelp between your legs; negroes are as hideous and bright
clothed as usual; grave Turks with long chibouques continue to
march solemnly without breaking them; a little Arab in one dirty
rag pokes fun at two splendid little Turks with brilliant fezzes;
wiry mountaineers in dirty, full, white kilts, shouldering long
guns and one hand on their pistols, stalk untamed past a dozen
Turkish soldiers, who look sheepish and brutal in worn cloth jacket
and cotton trousers. A headless, wingless lion of St. Mark still
stands upon a gate, and has left the mark of his strong clutch. Of
ancient times when Crete was Crete, not a trace remains; save
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