| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: other ignorant enough to believe. Never was any scene more simple in
appearance, nor more portentous in reality.
When they entered the room, ushered in by old David, they found
Seraphita standing by a table on which were served the various dishes
which compose a "tea"; a form of collation which in the North takes
the place of wine and its pleasures,--reserved more exclusively for
Southern climes. Certainly nothing proclaimed in her, or in him, a
being with the strange power of appearing under two distinct forms;
nothing about her betrayed the manifold powers which she wielded. Like
a careful housewife attending to the comfort of her guests, she
ordered David to put more wood into the stove.
Seraphita |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from End of the Tether by Joseph Conrad: He wished her at the bottom of the sea, and the in-
surance money in his pocket. And as, baffled, he left
Captain Whalley's cabin, he enveloped in the same
hatred the ship with the worn-out boilers and the man
with the dimmed eyes.
And our conduct after all is so much a matter of outside
suggestion, that had it not been for his Jack's drunken
gabble he would have there and then had it out with this
miserable man, who would neither help, nor stay, nor
yet lose the ship. The old fraud! He longed to kick
him out. But he restrained himself. Time enough for
End of the Tether |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: Mr. Wentworth's at the evening repast. The two occupants
of the chalet dined together, and the young man informed
his companion that his marriage was now an assured fact.
Eugenia congratulated him, and replied that if he were as
reasonable a husband as he had been, on the whole, a brother,
his wife would have nothing to complain of.
Felix looked at her a moment, smiling. "I hope," he said,
"not to be thrown back on my reason."
"It is very true," Eugenia rejoined, "that one's reason is dismally flat.
It 's a bed with the mattress removed."
But the brother and sister, later in the evening, crossed over to
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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 The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: somebody once wrote "the immemorial east"; and also, in the
inspired words of Kipling--
East is east and west is west,
And never the twain shall meet.
Instead of which, Egypt, India, and the subject countries
generally had produced new generations in a state of passionate
indignation and the utmost energy, activity and modernity. The
governing class in Great Britain was slowly adapting itself to a
new conception, of the Subject Races as waking peoples, and
finding its efforts to keep the Empire together under these,
strains and changing ideas greatly impeded by the entirely
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