| 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: as she was. I was certainly not as handsome. But I was vital, and I was
new, and she was old--they all forsook her and followed me. They
worshipped me. It was to my door that the flowers came; it was I had
twenty horses offered me when I could only ride one; it was for me they
waited at street corners; it was what I said and did that they talked of.
Partly I liked it. I had lived alone all my life; no one ever had told me
I was beautiful and a woman. I believed them. I did not know it was
simply a fashion, which one man had set and the rest followed
unreasoningly. I liked them to ask me to marry them, and to say, No. I
despised them. The mother heart had not swelled in me yet; I did not know
all men were my children, as the large woman knows when her heart is grown.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: engravings from the stanzas of Raphael in the Vatican--and with
most of the capitals of Europe as they had looked about 1780, by
means of several pig iron-moulded books of views. There was also
a broad eighteenth century atlas with huge wandering maps that
instructed me mightily. It had splendid adornments about each
map title; Holland showed a fisherman and his boat; Russia a
Cossack; Japan, remarkable people attired in pagodas--I say it
deliberately, "pagodas." There were Terrae Incognitae in every
continent then, Poland, Sarmatia, lands since lost; and many a
voyage I made with a blunted pin about that large, incorrect and
dignified world. The books in that little old closet had been
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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 Woman and Labour by Olive Schreiner: or class, and as invariably indicates disease as the pustules of smallpox
upon the skin indicate the existence of a purulent virus in the system.
We are, indeed, far from asserting that the civilisations of the past which
have decayed, have decayed alone through the parasitism of their females.
Vast, far-reaching social phenomena have invariably causes and reactions
immeasurably too complex to be summed up under one so simple a term.
Behind the phenomenon of female parasitism has always lain another and yet
larger social phenomenon; it has invariably been preceded, as we have seen,
by the subjugation of large bodies of other human creatures, either as
slaves, subject races, or classes; and as the result of the excessive
labours of those classes there has always been an accumulation of unearned
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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 Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: will know."
Still, New Orleans had built up its romance, and gossiped
accordingly.
"Have you heard the news?" whispered Lola to Annette, leaning
from her box at the opera one night. The curtain had just gone
up on "Herodias," and for some reason or other, the audience
applauded with more warmth than usual. There was a noticeable
number of good-humoured, benignant smiles on the faces of the
applauders.
"No," answered Annette, breathlessly,--"no, indeed, Lola; I am
going to Paris next week. I am so delighted I can't stop to
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
