| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: the pale, bleared eyes, and dull, washed-out-looking face, no
one had ever taken the trouble to read its faint signs: not the
half-clothed furnace-tender, Wolfe, certainly. Yet he was kind
to her: it was his nature to be kind, even to the very rats
that swarmed in the cellar: kind to her in just the same way.
She knew that. And it might be that very knowledge had given to
her face its apathy and vacancy more than her low, torpid life.
One sees that dead, vacant look steal sometimes over the rarest,
finest of women's faces,--in the very midst, it may be, of their
warmest summer's day; and then one can guess at the secret of
intolerable solitude that lies hid beneath the delicate laces
Life in the Iron-Mills |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: imaginings, her dream-mountain dwindled into a beastly "hold-your-nose"
affair, to be passed as quickly as possible, with anger and a strong sense
of superiority.
The landlady bounced out of the room, banging the door, so that it shook
and rattled as though it had listened to the conversation and fully
sympathised with the old hag.
Squatting on her heels, Viola opened the letter. It was from Casimir:
"I shall be with you at three o'clock this afternoon--and must be off again
this evening. All news when we meet. I hope you are happier than I.--
CASIMIR."
"Huh! how kind!" she sneered; "how condescending. Too good of you,
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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 Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: Your experience in 1900 should be fresh in your memory."
"Hard words, Mr. Smith."
"The class of missionary work which you favor, sir, is injurious
to international peace. At the present moment, Ho-Nan is
a barrel of gunpowder; you would be the lighted match.
I do not willingly stand between any man and what he chooses
to consider his duty, but I insist that you abandon your visit
to the interior of China!"
"You insist, Mr. Smith?"
"As your guest, I regret the necessity
for reminding you that I hold authority to enforce it."
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
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 A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: woman to whom he is eugenically antipathetic. She contemplates
nothing but such affectionate relations as may exist between her and
her nearest kinsmen, and has no knowledge of the condition which, if
not foreseen, must come as an amazing revelation and a dangerous
shock, ending possibly in the discovery that the marriage has been an
irreparable mistake. Nothing can justify such a risk. There may be
people incapable of understanding that the right to know all there is
to know about oneself is a natural human right that sweeps away all
the pretences of others to tamper with one's consciousness in order to
produce what they choose to consider a good character. But they must
here bow to the plain mischievousness of entrapping people into
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