| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Touchstone by Edith Wharton: it?"
"No," he returned coldly. The magazine was locked in his desk.
His wife had moved to the mantel-piece. She stood facing him and
as he looked up he met her tentative gaze. "I was reading an
article in it--a review of Mrs. Aubyn's letters," she added,
slowly, with her deep, deliberate blush.
Glennard stooped to toss his cigar into the fire. He felt a
savage wish that she would not speak the other woman's name;
nothing else seemed to matter. "You seem to do a lot of reading,"
he said.
She still earnestly confronted him. "I was keeping this for you--
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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 Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: XIII.
Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good;
A shining gloss that vadeth suddenly;
A flower that dies when first it gins to bud;
A brittle glass that's broken presently:
A doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower,
Lost, vaded, broken, dead within an hour.
And as goods lost are seld or never found,
As vaded gloss no rubbing will refresh,
As flowers dead lie wither'd on the ground,
As broken glass no cement can redress,
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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 Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: whom it maketh that there were no God. It ap-
peareth in nothing more, that atheism is rather in
the lip, than in the heart of man, than by this; that
atheists will ever be talking of that their opinion,
as if they fainted in it, within themselves, and
would be glad to be strengthened, by the consent
of others. Nay more, you shall have atheists strive
to get disciples, as it fareth with other sects. And,
which is most of all, you shall have of them, that
will suffer for atheism, and not recant; whereas if
they did truly think, that there were no such thing
Essays of Francis Bacon |
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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton by Edith Wharton: and eighteen miles, entering the Amazon near the mouth of the
latter river. The upper course of the Xingu is auriferous and
fed by numerous branches. Its source was first discovered in
1884 by the German explorer von den Steinen, after a difficult
and dangerous expedition through a region inhabited by tribes
still in the Stone Age of culture.'"
The ladies received this communication in a state of stupefied
silence from which Mrs. Leveret was the first to rally. "She
certainly DID speak of its having branches."
The word seemed to snap the last thread of their incredulity.
"And of its great length," gasped Mrs. Ballinger.
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