| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: the young officer, she was like a young tree whose branches had never been
touched by the ruthless hand of man. Such delicacy!" She sighed and
turned up her eyes.
"Of course it is difficult for you English to understand when you are
always exposing your legs on cricket-fields, and breeding dogs in your back
gardens. The pity of it! Youth should be like a wild rose. For myself I
do not understand how your women ever get married at all."
She shook her head so violently that I shook mine too, and a gloom settled
round my heart. It seemed we were really in a very bad way. Did the
spirit of romance spread her rose wings only over aristocratic Germany?
I went to my room, bound a pink scarf about my hair, and took a volume of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Barlaam and Ioasaph by St. John of Damascus: thereof, and cast it from me, then was there revealed unto me the
true good, to fear God and do his will; for this I saw to be the
sum of all good. This also is called the beginning of wisdom,
and perfect wisdom. For life is without pain and reproach to
those that hold by her, and safe to those who lean upon her as
upon the Lord. So, when I had set my reason on the unerring way
of the commandments of the Lord, and had surely learned that
there is nothing froward or perverse therein, and that it is not
full of chasms and rocks, nor of thorns and thistles, but lieth
altogether smooth and even, rejoicing the eyes of the traveller
with the brightest sights, making beautiful his feet, and shoeing
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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 From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne: and neckties, upon every finger, even upon the very ears, they
wore an assortment of rings, shirt-pins, brooches, and trinkets,
of which the value only equaled the execrable taste. Women, children,
and servants, in equally expensive dress, surrounded their husbands,
fathers, or masters, who resembled the patriarchs of tribes in the
midst of their immense households.
At meal-times all fell to work upon the dishes peculiar to the
Southern States, and consumed with an appetite that threatened
speedy exhaustion of the victualing powers of Florida,
fricasseed frogs, stuffed monkey, fish chowder, underdone
'possum, and raccoon steaks. And as for the liquors which
From the Earth to the Moon |
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 Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: metropolis of self, of which alone we are immediately aware -
or the diligent service of arteries and veins and
infinitesimal activity of ganglia, which we know (as we know a
proposition in Euclid) to be the source and substance of the
whole? At the death of every one whom we love, some fair and
honourable portion of our existence falls away, and we are
dislodged from one of these dear provinces; and they are not,
perhaps, the most fortunate who survive a long series of such
impoverishments, till their life and influence narrow
gradually into the meagre limit of their own spirits, and
death, when he comes at last, can destroy them at one blow.
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