| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: With unknown streets opening left and right,
New streets with farther lights, new taller houses,
Doors swinging into hallways filled with light,
Half-opened luminous windows, with white curtains
Streaming out in the night, and sudden music,--
And thinking of this, and through it half remembering
A quick and horrible death, my husband's eyes,
The broken-plastered walls, my boy asleep,--
It seemed as if my brain would break in two.
My voice began to tremble . . . and when I stood,
And told him I must go, and said good-night--
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Wrecker by Stevenson & Osbourne: excitement, was instantly, and I thought guiltily, withdrawn.
He wished, then, to conceal his interest? As Jim had said,
there was some blamed thing going on. And for certain, here
were these two men, so strangely united, so strangely divided,
both sharp-set to keep the wreck from us, and that at an
exorbitant figure.
Was the wreck worth more than we supposed? A sudden heat
was kindled in my brain; the bids were nearing Longhurst's
limit of five thousand; another minute, and all would be too
late. Tearing a leaf from my sketch-book, and inspired (I
suppose) by vanity in my own powers of inference and
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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 Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson: be pleased to find his father's name on the fly-leaf; and in the
meanwhile it pleases me to set it there, in memory of many days
that were happy and some (now perhaps as pleasant to remember)
that were sad. If it is strange for me to look back from a
distance both in time and space on these bygone adventures of our
youth, it must be stranger for you who tread the same
streets--who may to-morrow open the door of the old Speculative,
where we begin to rank with Scott and Robert Emmet and the
beloved and inglorious Macbean--or may pass the corner of the
close where that great society, the L. J. R., held its meetings
and drank its beer, sitting in the seats of Burns and his
Kidnapped |
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 Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: been up to to-day--those ten millions--each one doing his own
particular job. You can't grasp it. It's like old Whitman
says--what is it he says? Well, anyway it's like old Whitman.
Fine chap, Whitman! Fine old chap! Queer, you can't quote him.
... And these millions aren't anything. There's the millions
over seas, hundreds of millions, Chinese, M'rocco, Africa
generally, 'Merica.... Well, here we are, with power, with
leisure, picked out--because we've been energetic, because we've
seized opportunities, because we've made things hum when other
people have waited for them to hum. See? Here we are--with our
hands on it. Big people. Big growing people. In a sort of
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