| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: terrible, so dark! and I shall go on living year after year, always in this
awful pain! Oh, if I could only die!"
The older woman stood looking into the fire; then slowly and measuredly she
said, "There are times, in life, when everything seems dark, when the brain
reels, and we cannot see that there is anything but death. But, if we wait
long enough, after long, long years, calm comes. It may be we cannot say
it was well; but we are contented, we accept the past. The struggle is
ended. That day may come for you, perhaps sooner than you think." She
spoke slowly and with difficulty.
"No, it can never come for me. If once I have loved a thing, I love it for
ever. I can never forget."
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An International Episode by Henry James: but they were engaged in languid perusal of the bill of fare.
This latter document was a great puzzle to our friends, who, on reflecting
that its bewildering categories had relation to breakfast alone,
had an uneasy prevision of an encyclopedic dinner list.
They found a great deal of entertainment at the hotel, an enormous
wooden structure, for the erection of which it seemed to them that
the virgin forests of the West must have been terribly deflowered.
It was perforated from end to end with immense bare corridors,
through which a strong draught was blowing--bearing along
wonderful figures of ladies in white morning dresses and clouds
of Valenciennes lace, who seemed to float down the long vistas
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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 Just Folks by Edgar A. Guest: I am eager once more to feel easy,
I'm weary of thinking of dress;
I'm heartily sick of stiff collars,
And trousers the tailor must press.
I'm eagerly waiting the glad days--
When fashion will cease to assert
What I must put on every morning--
The days of the blue flannel shirt.
I want to get out in the country
And rest by the side of the lake;
To go a few days without shaving,
Just Folks |
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 Poems by Bronte Sisters: Like youth, to my maturer eyes,
All Nature's million mysteries,
The fearful and the fair--
Hope soothes me in the griefs I know;
She lulls my pain for others' woe,
And makes me strong to undergo
What I am born to bear.
Glad comforter! will I not brave,
Unawed, the darkness of the grave?
Nay, smile to hear Death's billows rave--
Sustained, my guide, by thee?
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