| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde: chatter about her, of course, but they don't know anything definite
against her. She has been to several houses - not to houses where
you would go, I admit, but still to houses where women who are in
what is called Society nowadays do go. That does not content her.
She wants you to receive her once.
LADY WINDERMERE. As a triumph for her, I suppose?
LORD WINDERMERE. No; but because she knows that you are a good
woman - and that if she comes here once she will have a chance of a
happier, a surer life than she has had. She will make no further
effort to know you. Won't you help a woman who is trying to get
back?
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: some rotting, like the earth; others, like the moon, stable in
desolation. All of these we take to be made of something we call
matter: a thing which no analysis can help us to conceive; to
whose incredible properties no familiarity can reconcile our minds.
This stuff, when not purified by the lustration of fire, rots
uncleanly into something we call life; seized through all its atoms
with a pediculous malady; swelling in tumours that become
independent, sometimes even (by an abhorrent prodigy) locomotory;
one splitting into millions, millions cohering into one, as the
malady proceeds through varying stages. This vital putrescence of
the dust, used as we are to it, yet strikes us with occasional
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War by Frederick A. Talbot: building, for instance, fairly and squarely, may inflict
widespread material damage.
On the other hand, where it is desired to scatter death, as well
as destruction, far and wide, an elaborate form of shrapnel shell
is utilised. The shell in addition to a bursting charge,
contains bullets, pieces of iron, and other metallic fragments.
When the shell bursts, their contents, together with the pieces
of the shell which is likewise broken up by the explosion, are
hurled in all directions over a radius of some 50 yards or more,
according to the bursting charge.
These shells are fired upon impact, a detonator exploding the
|
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 Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, etc. by Oscar Wilde: stepped forward and laid on it a large cross made of white and pink
almond-blossoms. As she did so, the moon came out from behind a
cloud, and flooded with its silent silver the little churchyard,
and from a distant copse a nightingale began to sing. She thought
of the ghost's description of the Garden of Death, her eyes became
dim with tears, and she hardly spoke a word during the drive home.
The next morning, before Lord Canterville went up to town, Mr. Otis
had an interview with him on the subject of the jewels the ghost
had given to Virginia. They were perfectly magnificent, especially
a certain ruby necklace with old Venetian setting, which was really
a superb specimen of sixteenth-century work, and their value was so
|
