| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: thought the head was the most difficult part of the matter--oh! oh! I really
cannot squeeze myself through!"
He now wanted to pull his over-hasty head back again, but he could not. For
his neck there was room enough, but for nothing more. His first feeling was of
anger; his next that his temper fell to zero. The Shoes of Fortune had placed
him in the most dreadful situation; and, unfortunately, it never occurred to
him to wish himself free. The pitch-black clouds poured down their contents in
still heavier torrents; not a creature was to be seen in the streets. To reach
up to the bell was what he did not like; to cry aloud for help would have
availed him little; besides, how ashamed would he have been to be found caught
in a trap, like an outwitted fox! How was he to twist himself through! He saw
Fairy Tales |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glasses by Henry James: meanwhile her rejoicing is wild. I daresay Mr. Dawling already
knows and, as it's nearly seven o'clock, may have jumped off London
Bridge. But an effect of the talk I had with him the other day was
to make me, on receipt of my telegram, feel it to be my duty to
warn him in person against taking action, so to call it, on the
horrid certitude which I could see he carried away with him. I had
added somehow to that certitude. He told me what you had told him
you had seen in your shop."
Mrs. Meldrum, I perceived, had come to Welbeck Street on an errand
identical with my own--a circumstance indicating her rare sagacity,
inasmuch as her ground for undertaking it was a very different
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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 At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: this arrangement, which had made it a proverb among the traders of the
Rue Saint-Denis: "Heaven preserve you from Monsieur Guillaume's
notary!" to signify a heavy discount.
The old merchant was to be seen standing on the threshold of his shop,
as if by a miracle, the instant the servant withdrew. Monsieur
Guillaume looked at the Rue Saint-Denis, at the neighboring shops, and
at the weather, like a man disembarking at Havre, and seeing France
once more after a long voyage. Having convinced himself that nothing
had changed while he was asleep, he presently perceived the stranger
on guard, and he, on his part, gazed at the patriarchal draper as
Humboldt may have scrutinized the first electric eel he saw in
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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 Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: doubtless people to whom torments of such an order appear hardly
more natural than the contortions of disease; but I don't after all
know why I should in this connexion so much as mention them. For
the few persons, at any rate, abnormal or not, with whom my
anecdote is concerned, literature was a game of skill, and skill
meant courage, and courage meant honour, and honour meant passion,
meant life. The stake on the table was of a special substance and
our roulette the revolving mind, but we sat round the green board
as intently as the grim gamblers at Monte Carlo. Gwendolen Erme,
for that matter, with her white face and her fixed eyes, was of the
very type of the lean ladies one had met in the temples of chance.
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